I was so excited for this book and it did not disappoint!! The story was so different than most contemporary romances and I love that it incorporates a bit of a sci fi time jumping element. Oh my goodness the cover is so pretty also! I cant wait to buy this just to admire on my shelf.

Whew boy. I started this book at 10:30am and didn't put it down until it was done.
I spent the entire day reading it, pausing only to refresh my tea and find tissues because while I spent the day reading, I also spent the day crying. This book is an absolute tearjerker. Usually I don't like books like that, but I found myself really enjoying this one. Lydia, Jonah, and Freddie were great and memorable characters.
I fully intend to read more books by Josie Silver.

My library will definitely be purchasing this title and I would highly recommend it to my patrons.

The premise of this novel is how a family deals with the sudden loss of someone. It is told from two POVs, but from his girlfriend over a period of more than a year. :One view is her "real" life, as she deals with his loss and adjustment to a life without him. The other viewpoint takes a bit of getting used to -- she is transported to an alternative world where he is still alive and they are planning to get married. At first I found these alt-chapters a bit annoying, but gradually you get used to them and the author scores some important points about how we can benefit from this different perspective and learn to love again and live our lives to the fullest. There is a lot of emotional depth in this book and I highly recommend it.

I couldn’t put The Two Lives of Lydia Bird down, I just wanted to keep reading to find out what was going to happen! I can’t imagine losing the love of my life, and if I was given the chance to visit him every night in my dreams, I wouldn’t get out of bed. Lydia lost her Freddie, her identity as Freddie’s girl, and her world stopped turning. With the help of some little pink pills, she was able to return to their life together when she slept. But that started to take it’s toll on her waking life, and even with her family’s support, she couldn’t find the balance between real life and her dreams. Freddie’s best friend survived the accident that killed Freddie, and is a shadow of his former self. The pain they both feel is so real, and so heartbreaking.
The journey Lydia goes on to find her way back to herself is inspiring and frustrating and beautiful all at once.

Imagine you had a terrible loss. For example, you were with someone for over a decade, and suddenly, they were gone. I, for one, would be an absolute mess. But what if there were a way to be with that person again? To live the Life you always wanted? Would you take it? And what would you do to keep that person in your life?

I loved One Day in December, so I was so excited for The Two Lives of Lydia Bird. And I think I loved it even more. I recommend this to anyone who loved One Day in December, or anyone who loves to dream..

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing House for an Advanced Copy in exchange for an Honest Review.

"The Two Lives of Lydia Bird" by Josie Silver is available March 3, 2020!

Lydia and Freddie met and fell in love at fourteen and have been together since. But when he is in a fatal car accident on her 28th birthday her world is turned upside down and she is forced to face life without him for the first time in 14 years.

I also met my husband as a teen and this book had me tearing up thinking of losing someone you have known have your life. In the book, Lydia finds a way to see her husband in an alternate universe and for awhile this tripped me up and I wasn't sure how I felt about the book. It didn't take long though for me to get sucked in and I loved the characters and the story so much by the end. Besides the alternate universe part, the book felt realistic because the feelings seemed so raw and real. I liked "One Day in December" and this book is just as good. It was also closed door romance, which I prefer.

Trigger warning for loss. This may be hard to read if you have lost a spouse or loved one recently.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballentine Books for the free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was the first book I read in 2020 and it was... okay. I read Josie Silver's first book, One Day in December, about a year ago and remember enjoying it but begrudgingly so. That one took A WHILE for me to get into and then, when I was in it, I wasn't loving it. I was reading to get to the end. I wasn't enjoying myself but I still had this want inside of me to just get to the end already. The Two Lives of Lydia Bird was much of the same but with way less payoff when you finally make it to the end.

The book is about Lydia, a twenty something living in London with her fiancée Freddie. Freddie is the love of her life having been together for over a decade. On her twenty eighth birthday, Freddie dies in a car accident. One night while trying to go to sleeps, she discovers a way to get back to her old life with Freddie as if nothing ever happened. So begins Lydia’s two lives, the one with Freddie, and the one without him.
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This book was such a treat to read right after finishing One Day in December! I loved both books, but I will say I needed way more tissues with Lydia. I loved how you see Lydia’s character evolve throughout the book. Josie Silver definitely knows how to set the scene and tug at the heartstrings! I recommend this for everyone that loved One Day in December, it’s a very different book, but it still has all the feels!

I found this novel kind of long and dull. Honeslty I had a hard time connecting with the main character despite the difficult circumstances she was in. There were some part of the novel that did move me to tears, but overall it was just okay. 3/5 for me.

I really enjoyed this book, it's a real step up from the author's debut, One Day in December. The story focuses on Lydia Bird, whose fiance, Freddie, passes away in a car crash. The loss is incredibly devastating and she feels that she can never (understandably) move on. Her family and friends rally round, but it just isn't enough. However, through the use of sleeping pills, she finds a way to be reunited with Freddie. While this allows her to escape, she then has to deal with the consequences when her two worlds collide.
This is a beautiful and moving exploration of grief and how we learn to make our peace with it. Highly recommended, thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

Wow. This is the best book I have read in a while. With P.S. I Love You vibes, honesty and grace, this story is beautiful. I will recommend this book to everyone and anyone as it handles loss and grief, but still offers hope in a realistic way.

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird shows the incredible versatility of Josie Silver as an author. I definitely picked this one up expecting a story similar to One Day in December (one of my favorites of 2018) and what I was was a story of love, loss and finding oneself again.

TTLoLB tugged at my heartstrings again and again and moved me to tears. Lydia, is straddling two worlds, a dreamlike world where her fiance is alive, and reality, where he has died and she is alone and suffering. Like most of us, Lydia would much rather spend her time in the dream world, but at what cost does her true reality suffer while away in this place? Silver raises excellent questions in this story and does a beautiful job at straddling the line between holding on and letting go.

Lydia and Freddie are engaged and been together for years. On Lydia's 28th birthday, Freddie is killed in a car accident. Lydia is given sleeping pills to help her sleep. While sleeping, she is reunited with Freddie. It is like he never died. Lydia wants to sleep her life away and be with Freddie. While awake she must face the truth that Freddie is gone. I loved this book and its characters. Lydia is so real and vulnerable. You feel everything Lydia does. Her happiness that Freddie is alive in her dreams and her sadness and grief while awake and missing Freddie. I received an advanced readers copy and all opinions are my own.

It feels wrong to criticize a book that is largely about the grieving process for being too long and occasionally disjointed when that’s what the process itself is like, but here I am, saying those are my main issues with this book.

It started out strong, with our main character Lydia’s loss of her fiancé fresh and raw, and the premise of her visiting a parallel life with him when she took her sleeping pills was intriguing at first. But then it felt more and more like a repetitive cycle of her awake life vs her asleep life and the shift in her actually starting to heal was too slow in coming. I liked Lydia and her overall journey, I just felt for the sake of narrative flow that it could have been a shorter book.

I was really excited about this book, but found that it was slower to start than One Day in December. However, by midway through, I was hooked, and had trouble putting it down. A beautiful romance about love lost!

Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC. Gosh, what a sweet book! The book starts out with Lydia finding out that her fiancé was killed in car accident. She spends half her time grieving during the day and half her life dreaming (with the help of sleeping pills) of what her life would be like if Freddie had lived. It is a wonderful story of how to cope with loss in your own way. #thetwolivesoflydiabird #josiesilver #march2020

Josie Silver writes lovely books. I loved One Day in December and while this one is slightly more melancholy at first compared to that one, it's still engrossing and ultimately uplifting. I liked how the parallel stories show growth in the protagonist's grief healing process. I experienced a loss a few years ago and found it cathartic to read about (I've had enough time to find it that way, I am not sure if I would feel the same if I had read it sooner). There's a good amount of romance and humor and lightness in it to keep it moving along without being completely pulled under by grief. Fans of Silver's One Day in December or of One Day by David Nicholls will enjoy this one.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Though initially the book had me feeling like it would go the traditional cookie cutter multi universe route complete with a typical happy ending, it actually didn’t do that...and I am not saying how it ends, just read it and see. The writing was lovely, the characters even the supporting ones were very well developed and were incredibly relatable. I haven’t been in those shoes, thank the lord but I did lose my mom a month after I got engaged and I’d be lying if I said I never imagined what my world would be if she hadn’t passed on, Lydia loses her fiancé within the first chapter (so that’s not a spoiler) and the parallel lives she lives had me going right back to the place of memories of the first year after my moms passing. The question of what if is a universal one and this book does a lovely job exploring it from every angle.

I struggled with this book. I had difficulty discerning what was real time and what was dream time and the switching back and forth. I figured out the ending long before I arrived at it. It just doesn't resonate with me. This one wasn't for me.

I’m not sure quite why I disliked this book so much early on. I received an advance copy to give an honest review and whether it was the topic of a young woman whose fiancé is killed in a car crash and has enormous problems continuing on with her life, or the confusion of her sleeping pill induced dreams where her lover is still alive and life goes on as if there has been no dreadful accident. At any rate, for me it was never magical or special the way I had hoped from the description of the book. It was simply sad until things changed and I suddenly found I absolutely loved the book - possibly an all time favorite. It’s kind of like all your favorite movies and books all rolled into one feel good story that actually has enormous power. Lydia is always aware that she is constantly putting herself in real danger with her dependence on the sleeping pills that can transport her back into life with her fiancée. She actually grows to prefer her sleep state to reality where her family is urging her to move on with her life. All of this is set in a British town where everyone knows everything about each other. In reality, it was almost always a threesome of friends since childhood - Lydia, Jonah and Freddie. Lydia somewhere deep inside still blames Jonah for the accident that killed Freddie. Jonah is also having his own troubles moving on. Both loved Freddy but in different ways; all were close friends since childhood with vastly entwined lives.

None of the characters were especially real for me early on. Much of this may be the very British personalities and traditions. I found myself just wanting to be finished and able to move on to a more interesting book until I truly warmed to the book. Early on, I think the wallowing in self pity was the most trying part of the book. Lydia’s mother and sister actively try to pull her out of her misery but Lydia comes to live for her pill induced world with her dead fiancé. In that world, her life can continue on to marriage, a future, her dreams fulfilled just as she’d imagined, but it is, of course, not real. She is well aware that she may be addicted to this sleep world and her grip on sanity. As time moves on, she goes back to her job and even decides to adopt an elderly cat but her fantasy filled dream life is what keeps her going. Gradually her relationship with Jonah begins to improve as they are more honest with each other.

Her dream world allows time to pass with Freddy and other friends and relatives appear in the dreams. One of my favorite parts is Lydia waking up in snowy Paris with Freddie. Very romantic and well done. Her real world and dream world begin to morph and change just as she is changing. Unfortunately the real world must intrude into her dream world. In one world her sister is pregnant but in the other, the baby is lost. From this point on, the book just keeps getting better and better. I would highly recommend this book as a fun, unique read.