I picked this book right after I read the synopsis and it was nothing like I expected – in a good way. The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a story about stages of grief. The book might be described as romance but it focuses on the dealing with the loss of someone who has been the centre of their life.
Lydia found a pill that bring her to a parallel universe where Freddie was still alive. It was soon apparent to the reader that she chose to alternate between realities to cope with her grief. However, as it went on, the alternate reality was not as happy as she thought it would be. It forced her to see and accept certain realisations about her relationship with Freddy – that the what ifs are not always better than reality.
Not only Lydia, we also saw how Jonah, Freddy’s best friend, processed his own grief. Although to a lesser degree and it was done through Lydia’s lens, it gives the story another layer to it. To me, Jonah’s own journey to move on from Freddy’s death helped Lydia to move on too. Their paces are different but at the end, they got there.
Josie Silver managed to write this novel with a lot of understanding and sensitivity. It is almost through Lydia’s story that she suggests that it is ok to move at your own pace when you are grieving. The story shows how life goes on despite the loss of a loved one and that moving on doesn’t mean you forget about them. It doesn’t mean that you are not allowed to live after one’s death and there is always hope and light at the end of the tunnel.
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird gives us a moving story on how grief can shape our lives and I love that it ends in an uplifting note!
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird
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.
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