Book Review: The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver

The Blurb:

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 her twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident.

So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants to do is 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 across the doorway of 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.

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. 

My Rating: ★★★★★

My Review:

Easily a five star read, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird was unputdownable. I devoured this book in a day.

From the intensely emotional beginning to the bittersweet ending I was captivated by Lydia. Her grief at losing her fiance, Freddie, is so very raw. Her struggle with the reality of losing her best friend and all their hopes and dreams; the denial, the bargaining…the entire grieving process laid out for the reader; drawing them into the story.

Perfectly paced and beautifully written, the alternate story lines were reminiscent of Sliding Doors ( Gwyneth Paltrow circa 1998).

Using sleeping pills to dull the pain of her loss, Lydia soon finds herself in a parallel ‘world’; one in which Freddie is still very much a part of her life but everything is not as it should be. Lydia has to grapple with her desire to be with Freddie and the knowledge that she has to move on without him.

Complicating matters is Lydia’s and Freddie’s best friend, Jonah.

Jonah who was her best friend before she met Freddie. Jonah who was always in her house, in her life, a third wheel in her relationship. Jonah who was in the car the night of Freddie’s accident.

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a profoundly moving tale of grief and loss; of coping with change, growth and moving on.

With thanks to the publisher via NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication March 2020.