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The Two Lives of Lydia Bird


Genre: Contemporary / Romance / Chick Lit

Book Type: Physical

Author: Josie Silver

Pages: 384

Publisher: Ballantine Books (March 3, 2020)

Book Description:

Written with Josie Silver’s trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life’s crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them. Lydia and Freddie. Freddie and Lydia. They’d been together for more than a decade and Lydia thought their love was indestructible. But she was wrong. On Lydia’s twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident. So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants is to hide indoors and sob until her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try to live fully, happily, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life—and perhaps even love—again. But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened. Lydia is pulled again and again through the doorway to her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there’s an emotional toll to returning to a world where Freddie, alive, still owns her heart. Because there’s someone in her new life, her real life, who wants her to stay.


Thoughts:

This is an unpopular opinion, as I wanted to love this book, but I didn’t. 😞 It fell short for me, as I thought it was a bit slow. I understand that that is how grief works, but I thought this would also focus on Lydia moving herself forward, which didn’t seem to pick up until the last 100 pages.


I did appreciate that this was a lighthearted book, that looked into how people can grieve through addiction after a heartbreaking loss. Two of my favorite lines that captured what I felt this book centered on were the following two quotes:


“And that’s what worries me most: that I won’t have the strength to resist falling so deeply into my other life that I become more there than here, too immersed to make my way safely home again,” (pg 64).


“The problem with addiction is that at some point you have to give up whatever is it that’s taken you over, or else give yourself over completely to it. I don’t want either of those things to happen. I want both of my lives, for that to happen I need to secure a footing here in the real world,” (pg 67).


While I really appreciated and liked the overall message of this book, I thought it could have moved a bit faster. I thought the ending was predictable but was looking for more of that lightheartedness throughout the book and ability to move forward after loss. This may have been my own misconception going into the book, as overall it was enjoyable, it just moved a bit too slow for me and I was expecting something a bit faster.


Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

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