Josie Silver's sophomore novel is incredibly moving and a lovely story about grief, and how one learns to love again. This book is a fun and rewarding story that dives deep into the fabric of everyday life to bring an authentic cast of characters and a grief so profound right into our hearts. For anyone wanting a bittersweet and emotional read that pushes the boundaries of what a love story can be, I would recommend The Two Lives of Lydia Bird.
Josie Silver's debut novel, One Day in December, was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Josie lives in a small town in the UK with her husband, their sons, and an everchanging cast of animals. You can find her at josiesilver.com. You can find more of my reviews of Josie's works here.
Lydia and Freddie. Freddie and Lydia. They're about to wed after almost a decade in love. But then, on Lydia's twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie dies in a tragic accident. Though she's wracked by grief, Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try and live fully, happily, even without him. With the help of her family and friends, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life—and even love—again. Then something unbelievable happens. Lydia gets another chance at her old life with Freddie. Lydia is pulled again and again through a doorway to her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there's a 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. 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 of fate, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.
This is a fantastic story that honestly keeps growing on me the more I think about it. For that reason, I highly recommend that if you haven't read this title, read it before reading my review. I am including all kinds of spoilers below, to fully explore what I think about this book!
This is wholeheartedly Lydia Bird's story, and shout out to whoever titled this novel, because they are correct. It is the two lives of Lydia Bird. This story is mostly centered around Lydia's exploration of grief, and how she began to learn again how to love her life and love herself. Because of this, the novel is definitely character-driven, and at points, it's easy to believe that there's no real plot other than the grief exploration through time. Silver does a wonderful job painting grief into Lydia's life at the beginning, while also developing Lydia's character through such a hard and painful experience. Lydia's character was a reason I enjoyed this book more than Silver's debut—she feels more real, more raw, than Laurie. The story definitely follows the passage of a life, which was incredible to watch unfold: all of the events felt mundane—a few weddings, a child, a job, a holiday or three—yet there were all heightened by Lydia's grief, in good or bad days. So while the book doesn't ever have a traditional plot in my opinion, Silver's pacing and spacing of life events with internal moments of character development do a good job in keeping reader's engaged and invested in Lydia's journey. It makes the ending incredibly satisfying, too!
This book is categorized as a contemporary romance novel by all accounts—most of the early parts of the novel build the relationship Lydia had with Freddie, and that she has with Freddie in the other world. Yet, part of the novel's branding is "Two lives. Two loves. One impossible choice." This is incredibly vague, and probably for a reason: are the two loves the past Freddie and the "current" Freddie? the past Freddie and someone else? the past Lydia, and the Lydia she's trying to be? All of this confusion mixed up into disappointment that there were no "second (real life) love prospects" until about halfway through the book. Once Silver pretty much cut Jonah out of the equation, Kris seemed like a nice enough guy to develop a romance with Lydia. But then once the relationship with Kris didn't work out, it was clear to see that this story was mostly about Lydia's journey through loss, and her coming to realize who she is without Freddie. Don't get me wrong, this is incredibly moving! It is probably what I most enjoy about this "romance" book—that, at the end of the day, it's more about Lydia's learning to love herself than anything. Yet, the branding of the novel led me to expect a story that I didn't get, that was different than I expected. So, if you're hoping for a romance between Lydia and someone else as she's overcoming the earlier stages of her grief, I would suggest that she doesn't find one at all, and that the only person she falls in love with over the course of the novel is herself.
One of my favorite moments in the earlier parts of this novel is when Lydia notes that she felt as if Jonah resented having to share Freddie with her—because Lydia oftentimes felt the same way about sharing Freddie with Jonah. This is where I began to guess that Jonah would be the next man she'd fall in love with, and even though I had a moment of doubt, I ended up being right. However, this was also the moment I noted inconsistencies in the text related to Jonah, which made it difficult to understand Lydia's and Jonah's relationship. For example, despite knowing Jonah the same amount of time as Freddie, I felt like I walked away from this book knowing more about Freddie than about Jonah. We never really get to know Jonah, despite his integral role near the end of the novel. It's also made clear multiple times that Jonah and Lydia knew each other since they were twelve, and were friends before they knew Freddie. It would have been helpful to see more of Jonah in the present, or to have Lydia flashback to previous interactions and relationships with Jonah as they moved through life. At the beginning, we're inclined to dislike Jonah—he could have been the reason Freddie died, and it's clear that Jonah's and Lydia's relationship has devolved since both of them started to choose Freddie instead of each other—so while the ending is perfect and lovely, it would have been made even more so if we knew more about Jonah's character and Jonah's friendship with Lydia so we could really cheer for them at the end. In that same vein, there is a balancing act between not including too much grieving and not introducing a new love interest too soon in stories like this. I'm not entirely sure that Silver found that perfect balance, but she did go with the safer option—introducing the love interest later so that the book feels like Lydia's journey, and that her story is about more than just her romance(s). Yet, it's difficult to get really invested in Jonah as part of her path forward because we've seen Lydia interact more with Freddie than with Jonah. Including more interactions with Jonah could have balanced that out. All in all, though, I am completely smitten with Jonah's character, the small ways readers got to see him overcoming his own grief, and eventually being part of one of the best last scenes in a romance novel I have ever read. (That last line of the book got me!)
My last notes are on the "other world" that Lydia finds when she takes a sleeping pill and is asleep. I personally wish that this other world was more developed. The concept of it all is there: getting to see a deceased loved one in a world where they still live. Visiting the world while Lydia sleeps, so there can be the whole arc of her having to choose which life is her own was a fabulous touch. Yet, I found that I had a lot more questions about this "other world" and the logistics behind it all. This could just be my business side, and something other people reading this book could care less about, because the logistics of the story matter less than the story itself. Which, usually I agree with, but as I kept reading, the questions kept compounding: did "other world" Freddie notice that Lydia was acting differently when "real world" Lydia was there? did "other world" Lydia have moments of not remembering, and would we even know? did the pills really cause it, or was it some sort of placebo effect? why didn't Lydia do research on the pills, maybe to help readers along in believing that the pills could have aided in this experience (maybe there were some crazy side effects)? There is a small moment at the end of the novel where Lydia sees a therapist, and it is determined that the pills gave her lucid dreams, a theory Lydia would not stake her life on, based on how real and different that other world was. Why give an explanation for the other world that Lydia would not believe in? I would have loved a bit of magic in this story, and wouldn't have minded the fantastical element if it could have explained this "other world" situation better. I am an incredible fan of the ways in which Lydia used this "other world" as a crutch, a dose of medicine, and eventually casts it aside. This is a great way to explore the passage of grief, and the deep hope one has in creating a life with someone who is gone. I just wish the novel had went further in developing and explaining the reality of the other world.
Overall, I was very glad to see that Josie's writing improved from One Day in December to The Two Lives of Lydia Bird. This read was rewarding, and I greatly enjoyed the happy ending. After noting an improvement in Josie Silver's writing, I would be very much inclined to try her next book. Once on This Island/One Night on the Island does not have a slated release date, yet it is forthcoming. Stay tuned!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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