The Two Lives of Lydia Bird kicks off with the death of Lydia’s fiance, Freddie (that’s not a spoiler, it’s in the synopsis, I promise!). The instant heartbreak that Lydia experiences gave me an immediate connection to her character, which sucked me in quickly.
The actual “two lives” thing threw me for a loop a little. As it turns out, the second life she experiences is a sleeping-pill induced dream-life. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from the synopsis, but this whole premise took some getting used to for me. Nonetheless, I thought it was really interesting to watch Lydia dip back and forth between the two, and see as she, little by little, diverged as a person between the two ‘worlds.’ Silver did a wonderful job of creating a narrative identifying the strength that is gained from overcoming loss.
As in her first book, Silver is also a master at crafting believable and heartwarming relationships, both romantic and platonic. I loved watching Lydia interact with her mom and her sister. Both of them were so real, and it was heart-wrenching to see the ways that both of them were affected by Freddie’s loss.
It was beautiful to watch Lydia learn how to reclaim her life and reconnect with herself and her surroundings in the face of unimaginable loss. There were some points in the middle of the book that felt a bit slow to me, but the end had me feeling all the feelings.

Review Published 2/27/2020
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the ending makes the book worth reading, but compared to her previous book, I was a bit disappointed.

I was excited that Josie Silver had written another novel because I enjoyed her first one, and I loved this one just as much! Even though the plot was based on the death of the main character's fiance, it had comical, lighthearted, and romantic elements that worked well without negating the seriousness of the emotions the main character was going through. I find supernatural explanations hokey, so I was glad the novel didn't stray into a fantastical explanation for the alternate universe plotline. Overall this was a sweet romance.

I have a file on goodreads entitled "I wish I had liked this book more" into which I am placing this story. While I loved this author's One Day in December, this new book just didn't give me all the thrills I was expecting.

First and foremost, I do think the author handles the very important topic of grief quite well. She managed to portray the very devastation that losing a loved one fosters on those who have experienced that loss. Certainly, her main character, Lydia, is overwhelmed by the tragic event that took her soon to be husband Freddie. That car accident left Freddie dead, his best friend, Jonah, hurt but not seriously, and Lydia planning her soon to be wedding, bereft. With the man she had loved since she was so very young, life seemed indestructible and glowing with opportunity. Instead, Lydia now faces a life of tears, sorrows, and remembrances.

Then something happens that pulls Lydia into an alternate universe where Freddie survived and her life with him continued. She is living in two worlds, the one where dreams exist and the one where reality dwells. How does one handle living in this emotionally charged environment and still manage to be part of reality? Keeping a foot in each world does not serve Lydia well and this story becomes one of allusions versus reality.

So what was it that caused my ambivalence with this story? For one, I am not the greatest target for a book such as this, not really being a romantic story reader. So I am sure that's partly to blame. The second item was that I found instances of the reality that Lydia lived in to be unreal. The characters in the story were all wonderfully understanding as Lydia spent months absent from her job and in a world where it was ever so obvious that she needed help. I couldn't help but question why her mother and sister did not seem to see that and although they loved her dearly allowed her to stay in the depths of despair. Another thing that just didn't gel with me was the amount of time her job allowed her to be away. It was unrealistic for most people who have experienced tremendous loss would ever had been granted that much time away from their job. Granted these seem like small items and yet they seemed to seep into the story and mar it for me. It was also certainly no secret how this all would work out and the story seemed to labor along until its inevitable conclusion.

However, I know that many will love this story with its mixture of romance and tragedy. I just wish I had been able to accept the premise a bit more.
Thank you to Josie Silver, Ballantine Books, and NetGalley for a copy of this story to be released in March.

Holy cow you guys. This book hits you right in the feels. It's about love. Grief. Friendship. Strength. Just absolutely perfect.

I loved Josie Silver’s first book, “One Day in December,” so I was excited to pick up “The Two Lives of Lydia Bird” this month. At the beginning of the book, Freddie, Lydia’s fiancé and boyfriend of nearly 15 years, dies in a car crash on the way to her 28th birthday dinner. Overwhelmed by grief and unable to sleep, Lydia receives an experimental new sleeping pill with an unusual effect: when she takes a pill, Lydia experiences life in an alternate universe where Freddie is still alive. As differences between her two lives begin to accumulate, Lydia must chose how to navigate and heal the best way she can.⁣
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I really enjoyed this beautifully written book, and I appreciate how Silver handled difficult issues with such sensitivity. I loved Lydia’s character, and my heart just broke for her as she struggled to carry on. I often don’t love books with multiple jumps in time, but just as with “One Day in December,” it worked well here. I do feel that the book glossed over some of the logistical elements of Lydia’s double life, but it was worth looking past this for the unfolding story.⁣
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I wouldn’t categorize this book as a traditional romance, but more of an exploration of how we continue to change, grow, and hope, even in the aftermath of tragedy. I loved how it also celebrated non-romantic love, and the special bond Lydia had with her mother and sister. Overall, the book had a slower, meandering pace, much like life itself at times. And despite the multiple lives element, the book had a very true-to-life feel and was emotionally resonant.⁣
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Thank you to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. Available 3/3/20
[Review posted 2/27/20 on my Instagram account, @emily_lovesbooks]

Thank you NetGalley for gifting me an advanced digital copy of Josie Silver's latest masterpiece, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird which will be published on March 3, 2020.

This book seriously tugged at my heartstrings. The author writes in such a way where I felt as though I had lost Freddie in my own life. I was experiencing Lydia's grief as she was. Almost every person can relate to loss and how much of an impact it has on your life. To have one more day with that special someone - would you? Even at the risk of disrupting your current life and the people in it? That exactly the predicament Lydia found herself in.

The character development was executed flawlessly as we see how Lydia and Jonah cope and deal with the loss of someone so instrumental in both of their lives. The entire 375 pages of this novel were beautifully written and not once did I want this story to end.

Anyone who has read One Day in December needs to read this. You will not be disappointed! Just make sure you have the tissues handy!

I really enjoyed this book. this makes me want to go back and read Josie Silvers other novel set around christmas

! If you had the chance to see a deceased loved one while you were sleeping, would you take it? When Lydia Bird loses her fiancé in a tragic car accident, her world is completely turned upside down. She thinks her life is completely over, until she discovers that when she is asleep, she is tossed back into a parallel universe where her fiancé Freddie is still living. Thus begins Lydia’s journey of discovering her own strength and working through her grief as she navigate between these two worlds. I really enjoyed getting to know each and every person in her life and I loved being able to identify each stage of grief as she struggles between her two worlds. Being a huge Josie Silver fan, I knew I would love this novel and it did not disappoint. Lydia is humorous and her path through her grief is something that is relatable to everyone. I LOVED this book

This is the story of Lydia Bird. She has a happy life with a career she enjoys, a loving family, and she is engaged to the love of her life. Then tragedy strikes when her fiancé is killed in a car accident on the way to celebrate her birthday.

While Lydia and Freddie share a loving relationship, this Is not a love story. This is a story about grief and how Lydia copes with Freddie’s death and her new reality of life without him.

Early on in her grief process, she find a way to slip into a parallel world. Much of the story is told in dual timelines between her asleep and awake times. Through these experiences, she learns how to find herself again after tragedy.

Josie Silver does an excellent job of trying to portray some of the emotions that go along with the topic. I cried many times while reading this, Many parts are light hearted, but the overall message is hard hitting

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this digital arc.
It's official. I love Josie Silver. For as much as she makes my heart absolutely ache in pain for her characters, I love her. First she reeled me in with One Day in December and now she's done it again with this book. Both books filled with so much raw emotion, heartache, pain, love, and laughter that I'm not even sure how she does it.
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a wonderfully sad yet uplifting book about Lydia Bird and the death of her fiance, Freddie in a car accident. Their long time friend Jonah survived the accident and they are left alone to try and work out their grief. Lydia has the support of her mom and her sister as she goes through those first days without Freddie but she can't sleep. She's given sleeping pills and every sleeping pill brings her to an alternate universe where Freddie is still alive. What sacrifices are made so that she can keep him in her alternate life when he's no longer there in real life?
I said that One Day in December packs a punch and this one does too. I connected so quickly to Lydia Bird and wanted to protect her immediately. Losing a loved one is difficult so I can't imagine losing the one you've loved over half your life. I was reminded of the movie Sliding Doors where the viewer is shown two different paths of a character all from a missed train. That and Lifeline by Rainbow Rowell where the main character is given a second chance to reconnect with her husband through her landline phone but she's talking to a younger version of him.
There's a kind of magic in this book that I loved, even though I felt so sorry for Lydia every time she jumped into the alternate timeline. I found myself conflicted because I was so interested in her alternate timeline and how different it was from her current timeline that I wanted to read more of it. At the same time, every single time she visited, my heart hurt for her. The writing is so intimate and you feel like you're going on this journey of grief with Lydia. Just one more time. Just one more night of seeing Freddie and wondering how alternate versions of her friends are doing. I loved that we were able to see how different her family and friends were doing, with and without Freddie. There were consequences for her happiness and not every visit was perfect. Lydia's sister is a a great supporting character who felt like a complete person. All of Lydia's coworkers brought humor to the story and made her a more well-rounded character. Jonah was my favorite besides Lydia. They were both going through this grief that they didn't know how to handle because it was so much. I was just as invested in Jonah's journey as much as I was in Lydia's. These two deserved happiness but it was going to take a long time for them to figure things out. As Jonah says, you can have more than one happy ending and it works so well for this book. Everything about this story was so rich and interesting.
I could talk about this book so much more but I feel like I would be spoiling so much. I'm just so happy that I read it, even when I was literally clutching my chest from the pain I was feeling for Lydia. I'm not one to actively read depressing and heavy books but Josie Silver does it in such a way that you can't help but read on. I kept thinking about this book when I was taking breaks from it. It sits with you and makes you wonder what you would do in a situation like this. I will continue to ride this Josie Silver train and hopes she keeps on writing.

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird was beautiful and heart wrenching. There was so much love between Lydia and Freddie. It was almost painful to watch Lydia struggle through her grief. Her nighttime visits with a Freddie were a nice reprieve from the grief. The story really sucked me in when Lydia began to come out of her grief and start living again. The best part of the story is when she learns to love again.

Not for me. Just couldn't get in to the parallel universe vibe. Wasn't a bad story but not something I prefer.

I read Silver’s previous work - One Day in December - via Book of the Month last year, so I was eager to read another British love story that tugged at my heartstrings.

And tug it did! To be fair, you are already set up for heartbreak by the premise of Lydia Bird. You know that Lydia’s fiancé dies. You know that you’re going to watch her grieve, then come to terms with the fact that she can somehow still be with Freddie in an alternate reality, making every waking moment without him that much more bittersweet. But you’re still not quite prepared by the very convincing grief that comes off the pages of Silver’s latest novel.

The journey through Lydia’s grief takes many twists and turns, but they are all very believable. I love the relationships she had with secondary characters, who were all really well fleshed-out. Her close knit relationships with her single mother and corporate-yet-cool sister were very believable and fraught with their own unique tensions and hurdles. Her intense connection with her fiancés best friend - and only survivor of the accident that killed him, by the way - is at times predictable and other times a little too neatly tied up. Lydia and everyone else around her seem to come to terms with the fact that Jonah lived and Freddie died. No one blames Jonah and their relationships don’t seem to suffer with him because of that (which is good and healthy and everything, but I’m not sure it’s realistic).

It comes as no surprise that living in these two worlds - one where she can be with, marry, and travel with her former fiancé, and another where she has to work through her grief over his loss - becomes unhealthy. The desire to be in one world - either world - starts to affect her life in the other. And spoiler alert: reality is almost always better.

I had the same problem with the end of Lydia Bird that I had with One Day in December - the ending closes the curtain right when I think the story could get really good. Right when everything feels as it should be and you might actually get to see the characters grow and develop together and have a few more happily ever afters. It’s a sweet rom-com close, one that I’m trying hard not to spoil too much here, but it seems a bit of a cop out when all I want is to see these grief-stricken characters be more happy.

Thank you to Ballatine Books for the advanced reader's copy of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver in exchange for my honest review!

In 2018, Josie Silver burst onto the scene with her phenomenal debut novel, One Day in December. When I saw she was releasing another book so quickly, I jumped at the opportunity to read it.

"Freddie Hunter, otherwise known as the great big love of my life, died fifty-six days ago." The Two Lives of Lydia Bird opens up on Lydia's birthday.....and her fiancé, Freddie, suddenly passes away. We follow Lydia through months of grieving. She can't look Freddie's best friend in the eye, because he survived the crash. She can't sleep in their giant bed, so instead, Lydia decides to lay on the couch and actively not sleep. Until one day, her mother bugs her doctor to prescribe something that will finally help, and Lydia decides to take one of the small pink pills. When she sleeps, she is sent into another world - a world where Freddie is alive. Lydia begins to loathe being awake, and counts down the hours until she can be with Freddie in her pill-induced dream world. But when her family needs her in her real life and possible new connections are waiting for her, will Lydia be able to say goodbye to Freddie for good?

This book is 432 pages long...and reading this premise, I was worried that I would be bored, and that I would get to the end of the novel wishing it was 100 pages shorter. But I should have reminded myself that this is a Josie Silver novel we're talking about!

Josie Silver has carved her own space in the romance genre. I've noticed that she can take any trope that's been exhausted, any storyline we've seen time and time again, and somehow make it new, captivating, and elegant. So, I should have known that by the time I was halfway through The Two Lives of Lydia Bird I would be so invested that I wouldn't mind if her story was 100, 200, 300 pages longer than it needed to be. 

In The Two Lives of Lydia Bird, there are these breathtaking snippets of very simple ideas - ones that we all experience in our lives, that are spelled out in new metaphors, colors, and experiences. Whether its a simple moment that reminds us of someone we love, or a feeling of loneliness, I recommend that while you read, you take the time to linger through the words of this novel. Hold them in your heart the way Lydia holds her memories of Freddie.

Lydia's utter heartwrenching moments, both awake and asleep, remind us how much we have to sacrifice to both remember our loved ones, and attempt to move on. It's a double-edged sword and that's exactly what comes through in this novel. The moments in the asleep-world that Lydia enters are almost ethereal, colored in the same shade of pink as the cover of this book. 

Not that it comes as a surprise, but the love story here isn't about Lydia and Freddie, it's about Lydia and Lydia. We watch Lydia torture herself, and we understand every step she takes: we hurt with her and hope she will finally take a look at the damage she is causing in her own life. But the part that finally gets to you (and your tear ducts) is not Lydia balled up crying over Freddie, it's not her first steps out of her house, its when she finally cracks her heart open in order to truly heal.

In short, mark me down as a Josie Silver fan for life.

After reading One Day in December by Josie Silver last year and falling in love, I knew I would be picking up her latest, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird. Lydia Bird has been with her fiance, Freddie for over a decade, until in the blink of an eye, the future she envisioned is taken away when Freddie dies in an accident. Soon, Lydia is living in two worlds - one where Freddie is alive and they are continuing to plan their wedding, and reality, where Freddie is still gone and Lydia is struggling to cope and move on with her life.

The strongest part of this book, for me, was the way it depicted Lydia navigating through her grief and figuring out what comes next. The way we see Lydia attempt to grapple with the consequences of continuing to visit the alternate world where Freddie is alive, both for herself and for those around her. The way that Silver was able to have you feel what Lydia was feeling and the agony of her loss was remarkable.

I'd add that this has been billed as a romance and I don't know that I'd stick with that description. Not that romances can't be sad, but I didn't feel that the relationship was the main story line in this book and it was more about Lydia and her journey after Freddie.

4/5 stars

I would have enjoyed this book more if there were not so many titles out recently that use alternate lives, parallel universes, & similar constructs.

This book was not the cute romance that I expected, which is fine. It was mostly a story about dealing with grief and to be honest not a whole lot really happened until the end. It was for the most part painfully slow and dreadfully boring. It did pick up some in the last 10% of the book and I did enjoy the ending. I LOVED One Day In December and I will still be quick to grab the next book this author writes.

This is one of those sad, emotional stories about a girl who lost her fiancee in an accident, but it’s also heartwarming because it wouldn’t be a romance without a parallel story where he didn't die, induced by prescription drug dream sequences. It’s not my favorite genre to read but I like to keep an open mind and try everything. Sigh. I am apparently dead inside because I find this book a little ridiculous. I guess it's just not for me.

Well, this was not what I was expecting..in a good way though! If you are expecting a romantic repeat of ‘One Day in December’ you need to clear your expectations. Grief has no time expiration and one way fits all - it thrives on the inability to move on. *Trigger warnings: grief, slight opioid use, and miscarriage.* Ya’ll this book is SAD - all types of sad: sad sad, angry sad, happy sad LOL. So bring out the tissue and let the tears fall. If someone told you, you could spend more time with a lost loved one- would you do it? Thats exactly what Lydia does. She finds a way to live a double life with Freddie. This story follows Lydia preferring to live in her lucid dreams versus her grieving reality. Silver’s writing gave me chills and tears for Lydia - I couldn’t help but empathize with Lydia. All the surrounding characters in Lydia’s life were well-developed and super relatable! Each character plays an important role in her life; her sister Elle, her mother, and Jonah (Freddie’s best friend). This book takes place over 2 years that Lydia spent grieving. As frustrating as it seems, you can’t help but want to force Lydia to move on. I would’ve loved to see more of her “Awake” chapters versus the “Asleep” ones. I did enjoy the heartfelt second half of the book when Lydia learns to live life - the ending was perfect! I smiled through the ending with happy tears. Overall, a beautifully written book of love and loss, meant for the strong heart.