The two lives of Lydia Bird: a novel

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Two lives. Two loves. One impossible choice. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club Pick One Day in December . . . “I read The Two Lives of Lydia Bird in a single sitting. What a beautiful, emotional gift Josie Silver has given us.”—Jodi PicoultWritten 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. 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 Lydia’s twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident. So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants is to 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 through the doorway to 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.

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Similar Titles From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
In these moving and thoughtful relationship fiction novels, women dealing with grief are given a second chance to gain closure with their partner (Lydia Bird) and father (This Time Tomorrow). -- CJ Connor
We recommend A Song for the Road for readers who like The Two Lives of Lydia Bird. Both are heartwrenching relationship fiction about coping with death. -- Yaika Sabat
Both moving, character-driven relationship novels star young women caught in unique versions of their lives as they navigate romantic and personal relationships in ways they never expected. -- Halle Carlson
Women work through their grief and tentatively explore new romantic connections in these winsome novels. The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is more heartwrenching than the humorous Garden of Small Beginnings. -- Halle Carlson
Building on strong, loving relationships, these heartwrenching books force individuals to decide how to proceed within those relationships. Both have fantastical elements -- The Sight of You is based on foreknowledge of death; Two Lives on two parallel lifelines. -- Shauna Griffin
After the loss of their partners, the women in these engaging chick lit novels attempt to bounce back in different ways -- one retreats into a dreamland (Lydia Bird), while another moves to a new town (Evvie Drake). -- Kaitlin Conner
In these moving novels, women who have lost their fiance (Lydia) and husband (Life Intended) find themselves continuing the relationships through dreams, even as they attempt to move on with their lives. -- Halle Carlson
While The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is more emotionally intense than What If It's You?, both thoughtful stories follow women as they bounce between two alternate realities to find out what they truly want in life. -- Malia Jackson
In these heartwrenching (The Two Lives of Lydia Bird) and heartwarming (In Five Years) novels, sympathetic women experience alternate realities via their dreams, which help them learn what they want from their lives in the real world. -- Kaitlin Conner
Whether in dreams (Lydia Bird) or alternate timelines (Another Life) each of these moving novels explores the "what if" in the sympathetic protagonist's life. The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is more heartwrenching than the romantic Maybe in Another Life. -- Halle Carlson
Both novels feature young women coping with the loss of someone dear; Lydia Bird loses her fiance, Days of Awe's Isabel her best friend. Grief, and coming to terms with it, are the focus of these heartwrenching and engaging novels. -- Erin DeCoeur
While Photos of You features a young woman confronting her own mortality and The Two Lives of Lydia Bird focuses on the loss of a loved one, both stories are bittersweetly romantic and moving. -- Erin DeCoeur

Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
Focusing on women's lives and relationships, Josie Silver and Veronica Henry write engaging, character-driven stories that often end on a hopeful note. Though romance is not the central plot, their novels often include romantic elements, sometimes with a bittersweet tinge. -- Halle Carlson
Both Josie Silver and Sophie Cousens write feel-good, steamy contemporary romance novels that star sympathetic, well-developed characters and frame popular romance tropes in a humorous, thoughtful style. Their character-driven stories shine a light on women whose experiences in love and life are both funny and poignant. -- Mary Olson
Taylor Jenkins Reid and Josie Silver write absorbing fiction about the circuitous route life can take towards finding happiness. Their sympathetic characters face loss and hardships, but also find joy in family and friends. Though their novels can tug at the heartstrings, they include humor and end in an upbeat way. -- Halle Carlson
Though Beth O'Leary's novels lean more into romantic comedy territory while Josie Silver's remain firmly entrenched in women's lives and relationships, both British authors look at the ways love and romance can bring happiness and heartache to their relatable characters' lives. -- Halle Carlson
These authors' works have the appeal factors romantic, and they have the genres "relationship fiction" and "romantic comedies"; the subjects "love," "couples," and "friendship"; and characters that are "sympathetic characters" and "flawed characters."
These authors' works have the genres "relationship fiction" and "contemporary romances"; the subjects "christmas," "interpersonal attraction," and "secrets"; and characters that are "sympathetic characters" and "well-developed characters."
These authors' works have the genres "relationship fiction" and "contemporary romances"; the subjects "love," "women cooks," and "cooks"; and characters that are "flawed characters" and "complex characters."
These authors' works have the appeal factors first person narratives, and they have the genres "contemporary romances" and "romantic comedies"; the subjects "grief" and "loss"; and characters that are "sympathetic characters."
These authors' works have the appeal factors romantic, and they have the genres "contemporary romances" and "romantic comedies"; the subjects "love," "interpersonal attraction," and "love triangles"; and characters that are "sympathetic characters."
These authors' works have the appeal factors romantic, and they have the genres "contemporary romances" and "romantic comedies"; the subjects "love," "grief," and "love triangles"; and characters that are "sympathetic characters."
These authors' works have the genres "contemporary romances" and "romantic comedies"; and the subjects "love," "men-women relations," and "interpersonal attraction."
These authors' works have the genres "contemporary romances" and "romantic comedies"; the subjects "love," "fate and fatalism," and "interpersonal attraction"; and characters that are "sympathetic characters," "flawed characters," and "authentic characters."

Published Reviews

Booklist Review

Lydia Bird's waking life is a nightmare. The love of her life, Freddie, has just been killed in a senseless car crash on her birthday. Without Freddie, she spends her days in misery, grief, and despair. But at night she is transported by a new kind of sleeping pill into hyperrealistic dreams, to a world where Freddie is still alive and she can be with him. Now she splits her time between her real life, where she takes tentative steps to deal with her grief, and the dream life. But can you ever really heal when you spend half your time in a fantasy? As much a meditation on healing after loss as it is a gently developed love story (Lydia eventually comes to care for Jonah, Freddie's best friend), with excellent characters who all get a chance to experience growth, Silver's wonderful follow-up to One Day in December (2018) will be sure to appeal to existing fans and draw in new ones with its humor, heart, and excellent prose.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

Silver's latest (after One Day in December) is a heartbreaking, poignant tale of a woman suffused in a prescription drug-fueled dream state after a great loss. After Lydia Bird's fiancé, Freddie Hunter, is killed in a car accident on her birthday, she gets hooked on sleeping pills and retreats into a dreamworld where nothing has changed. Lydia's sister Elle and her mother push her to learn how to build a life without the man she'd been with since she was a teenager and encourage her to redefine her relationship with her late fiancé's best friend, Jonah, who survived the crash. But her dreams continue, aided by the pills, and in them she and Freddie get married, go on their honeymoon, and celebrate Lydia's birthday. After the birth of Elle's daughter, Lydia rises out of her funk and spontaneously flies to Croatia, where she considers a job offer, video chats with Jonah, and tries to imagine a future. Through lush prose, expert plotting, and richly imagined characters, Silver offers an achingly real portrait of grief transposed with the character's intoxicating parallel universe. This will stay with readers long after the final page is turned. Agent: Jemima Forrester, David Higham Assoc. (Mar.)

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Kirkus Book Review

A woman loses her partner in a horrific car accident and must piece together her life while dreaming about an alternate reality of what life would have been like had he not died.On Lydia Bird's 28th birthday, she has an innocuous conversation with her long-term partner, Freddie Hunter. He's going to make a detour to pick up his best friend, Jonah Jones, for her birthday dinner. The delay will make him late, much to Lydia's chagrin. And with that, the last conversation she ever has with her beloved passes her by while she tries to disentangle a Velcro roller from her hair. Author Silver (One Day in December, 2018) has created a story about grief that follows Lydia in two worldsreal life, where she must grapple with life without Freddie for the first time since they met at school in their little Shropshire town in England, and in her sleeping pill-aided dreams, where there was no accident and their wedding plans are continuing apace. Jonahthe third in their group, Lydia's one-time best friend before Freddie moved to town, and a constant, friendly presence in her life from childhoodis also struggling with the accident, which he walked away from. This is very much Lydia's story, however, as she learns to exist as one person instead of as part of a couple. She receives ample support from those around herher sister, her mother, her co-workers, Jonaheven though she is so caught up in herself and what might have been that she does not reciprocate. At its core, this is a story of love lost and individual growth. But it is also about love found and future happiness. While this is in many ways the complete opposite of Linda Holmes' Evvie Drake Starts Over, fans of that book will enjoy it.A story that thoughtfully takes readers to the Hollywood ending they can see coming. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Lydia Bird's waking life is a nightmare. The love of her life, Freddie, has just been killed in a senseless car crash on her birthday. Without Freddie, she spends her days in misery, grief, and despair. But at night she is transported by a new kind of sleeping pill into hyperrealistic dreams, to a world where Freddie is still alive and she can be with him. Now she splits her time between her real life, where she takes tentative steps to deal with her grief, and the dream life. But can you ever really heal when you spend half your time in a fantasy? As much a meditation on healing after loss as it is a gently developed love story (Lydia eventually comes to care for Jonah, Freddie's best friend), with excellent characters who all get a chance to experience growth, Silver's wonderful follow-up to One Day in December (2018) will be sure to appeal to existing fans and draw in new ones with its humor, heart, and excellent prose. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews

Silver's latest (after One Day in December) is a heartbreaking, poignant tale of a woman suffused in a prescription drug-fueled dream state after a great loss. After Lydia Bird's fiancé, Freddie Hunter, is killed in a car accident on her birthday, she gets hooked on sleeping pills and retreats into a dreamworld where nothing has changed. Lydia's sister Elle and her mother push her to learn how to build a life without the man she'd been with since she was a teenager and encourage her to redefine her relationship with her late fiancé's best friend, Jonah, who survived the crash. But her dreams continue, aided by the pills, and in them she and Freddie get married, go on their honeymoon, and celebrate Lydia's birthday. After the birth of Elle's daughter, Lydia rises out of her funk and spontaneously flies to Croatia, where she considers a job offer, video chats with Jonah, and tries to imagine a future. Through lush prose, expert plotting, and richly imagined characters, Silver offers an achingly real portrait of grief transposed with the character's intoxicating parallel universe. This will stay with readers long after the final page is turned. Agent: Jemima Forrester, David Higham Assoc.(Mar.)

Copyright 2020 Publishers Weekly.

Copyright 2020 Publishers Weekly.
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