Lydia and Freddie. Freddie and Lydia. They've been together for almost a decade, and Lydia thinks their love is indestructible.
But she's wrong. Because on her 27th birthday, Freddie dies in a tragic accident.
So now it's just Lydia, and all she wants to do is hide indoors and sob 'til her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to live her life well. So, enlisting the help of his best friend and her sister Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world and starts to live - perhaps even to love - again.
Then something unbelievable happens, and Lydia gets another chance at her old life with Freddie. But what if there's someone in her new life who wants her to stay?
I'd like to thank Georgia at Penguin Books for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour and for my proof copy of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird to review.
Last year Josie Silver burst onto the scene with her bestselling novel One Day in December and now she's back with another poignant read of loss and love that will certainly pull at the heartstrings. How can you go on living when the love of your life has been killed? That is the situation that our central character Lydia Bird has to face as one minute she was looking forward to a future with Freddie, the next she is struggling to cope with her grief and the thought of spending the rest of her life without him by her side.
We follow Lydia on her journey as she struggles through the various stages of grief and rebuilding. Although I've not had to deal with the death of a partner, I know only too well the pain of losing someone special in my life and like Lydia I knew only too well the pain and despair of trying to get through each day.
The story is narrated through the two stages of the day; 'Awake' when Lydia is mainly getting through the day on auto pilot, living but not really living the life she had planned, and 'Asleep' where she desperately wants to fall into that deep sleep stage where her dreams are filled once again with a life with Freddie still very much alive. This was very much a rose-tinted version of what life could have been like with Freddie and not the warts and all version of who he really was and the little things he did that used to annoy her.
As we all know when dealing with the death of a loved one, it's a slow process and a case of taking one day at a time. And that's what I enjoyed about The Two Lives of Lydia Bird in that the story is told over a period of 18 months, and not just the initial days and months after Freddie's death, so we get to see Lydia rebuilding a new future for herself and become a stronger person as a result of everything she has had to deal with.
Initially I favoured the 'Asleep' sections more even though I knew that this wasn't a healthy situation long-term for Lydia imagining what her life with Freddie could have been like. But over time I began to much prefer the daytime sections of the book as as she took her tentative steps to move forward and rebuild a life for herself without Freddie.
Although this is naturally Lydia's story, the secondary characters all played their part too. From her family, her over-protective mum, sister Elle and her husband, who all want to protect her, to her long-term best friend Jonah who was struggling with his own grief and survivors guilt as he came out of the accident with barely a scratch. As for the Freddie of her dreams, he really was a loveable rouge and you could see why Lydia fell in love with him.
Once again Josie Silver has written another fabulous book and I can't wait to see what she has up her sleeve next!
All book titles in bold are Amazon UK Affiliate links which will earn me a few pence if anyone clicks through and makes a purchase - any money earned will go towards buying books or gifts for giveaways.
No comments:
Post a Comment