Title: The Two Lives of Lydia Bird | Goodreads
Author: Josie Silver
Try ordering from…your Local Indie Bookstore
Publishing: January 30th, 2020 by Ballantine Books
Format: Hardcover
Source: The Novel Neighbor
Genre: Fiction; Adult; Romance
Date Read: March 2020
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.
Title: One Day in December | Goodreads
Author: Josie Silver
Try ordering from…your Local Indie Bookstore
Publishing: October 16th 2018 by Ballantine Books
Format: ARC
Source: Book Expo
Genre: Fiction; Adult; Romance
Date Read: March 2020
Two people. Ten chances. One unforgettable love story.
Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn’t exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there’s a moment of pure magic… and then her bus drives away.
Certain they’re fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn’t find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they “reunite” at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It’s Jack, the man from the bus. It would be.
What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered.
I have been quarantined for over a month and blog content has been admittedly slow. Online college is not nearly as fun as attending classes in person, and as many people are feeling the days have at times really started to run together. This is fortunately my last week of classes before finals, and while the next step is currently TBD, I’m certain that there will be blogging involved.
I first heard about Josie Silver when I brought home One Day In December from BookExpo a couple of summers ago, but it wasn’t until I saw an Instagram ad for The Two Lives of Lydia Bird that I actually sat down to read these two. I started with The Two Lives of Lydia Bird because that was the premise that drew me in the most, in part because it reminded me of the premise of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Maybe In Another Life, which I have recently re-read.
I ended up reading The Two Lives of Lydia Bird in the span of 48 hours because I just couldn’t wait to find out how Lydia’s story ended. This is always my favorite way to read a book–feeling as though you’re rushing towards the ending as fast as you can. I think that part of this was that Lydia was an extremely likable character; I felt compassion for her even in her most difficult moments. Silver did a great job of creating a full life for Lydia, but what stands out to me the most was the character growth we saw Lydia experience. By that I mean, in a romance novel you typically expect the main plot to be the romance, but here, in at least the first part of the novel, the focus was on Lydia’s experience of grief, and how she processed reestablishing her place in the world after the death of Freddie. Watching Lydia overcome so much helped me stay totally invested in her story and aching for a happy ending. Without giving too much away, I also loved how the relationship with the “someone new” in Lydia’s life played out because it felt natural.
When I finished The Two Lives of Lydia Bird I believe my first reaction was “my whole heart!!!!” Looking back on it, I feel the same way today. However, this novel might not be the straightforward romance you are expecting. I would probably categorize it more as a contemporary adult novel about Lydia Bird’s journey…with some romance thrown in there as well. I recommend this for anyone who wants that sort of feel good, pick me up novel.
After finishing The Two Lives of Lydia Bird was still feeling the romance kick so I went looking for Josie Silver’s first novel, One Day In December. However, for several reasons, I didn’t love One Day In December NEARLY as much. For one, I think it’s telling that the relationship I was most invested in wasn’t any of the romance, it was the friendship between Laurie and Sarah. This solid, girl power bestie-ship was a pleasure to watch as they moved throughout their young adult years. It was fun to watch them do so and caused me to imagine me and MY friends doing the same sorts of things in the next decade, like sharing an apartment and introducing new SOs to each other.
Perhaps more importantly…I really didn’t like our main love interest Jack. He’s supposed to be this golden boy that is attractive and that people like but…I didn’t. I didn’t like Jack’s character, I thought he was rather boring, and at times really mean. I didn’t think that he had NEARLY enough character development over the course of the novel to warrant the way that it ends. I found lots of other men in the novel far more compelling partners for Laurie. Alas…
My criticisms of One Day In December by no means made it unenjoyable to read in the moment. It still gave me that desperately angsty feeling that I must finish this novel as soon as possible. Overall, I think that Josie Silver had really hit her stride with The Two Lives of Lydia Bird, but that doesn’t mean that One Day in December is a “disappointing” debut.
What have you been reading lately?
