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A review by obsidian_blue
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver
1.0
Like sliding doors, but bad. I got nothing else really to say except I have no intention of reading Silver's books in the future. I tried this one and her previous book and I can say that her writing style/plots are not going to suit me at all so I am going to just move on. Also, I am tired of people saying this is a great romance. It really is not. It doesn't even end on a HEA, but a HFN and it's a really messed up HFN if you can even call it that.
"The Two Lives of Lydia Bird" follows Lydia after she deals with the loss of her fiancee Freddie. Lydia is going through the motions until she gets some pills to help her sleep. Now she awakes in a world where Freddie is still alive and then when she sleeps and awakens again she is in a world where he has died. I really wish that I could say this book moved me, but honestly there's not a lot there. We just deal with Lydia and her grieving and sometimes there's a spark there of a character, and then it just goes away again.
Lydia is not developed beyond she lost her fiancee. I have to say that Silver maybe could have turned things around for not going in the direction I knew she was as soon as the book telegraphed it fairly on. It just made the the whole book feel endless and pointless.
The other characters like Jonah, not developed, her coworkers, not developed, her sister and mother, not developed, heck Freddie was probably the best developed, and we don't really get a sense of him except in the chapters when Lydia is awake with him.
The writing isn't that great. I think the whole book just becomes beyond boring after you get past the premise which is Lydia is taking pills to be back with her dead fiancee. I think if Silver had worked in some magical realism or something to the book, maybe it would have worked better. If anything, I just kept thinking well obviously this isn't really happening and these are just dreams she's having. The book just becomes very repetitive and it doesn't help with the chapter headings calling everything "Awake". Frankly she should have called it Awake with Freddie and Awake Without or something. It was hard figuring what reality she was in after a while.
It does not help that the flow is also poor. I think the biggest issue is that Lydia is selfish as the day as long (the book shows it again and again) and I didn't get a big love story between her and her fiancee. We keep getting told via her that it was, but then we see her being stuck and seemingly wanting her fiancee's best friend to be stuck right along with her. The book is not thrilling and it's not a freaking romance. I really wish that people would stop mislabeling books like that and when you read it, you go, yeah...this isn't a romance unless you stretch really far and look at it with one eye open.
The setting of the book is of course the UK, but with a stop in Crotia. I don't know what else to say. The whole book read as so flat.
The ending.Nope.
"The Two Lives of Lydia Bird" follows Lydia after she deals with the loss of her fiancee Freddie. Lydia is going through the motions until she gets some pills to help her sleep. Now she awakes in a world where Freddie is still alive and then when she sleeps and awakens again she is in a world where he has died. I really wish that I could say this book moved me, but honestly there's not a lot there. We just deal with Lydia and her grieving and sometimes there's a spark there of a character, and then it just goes away again.
Lydia is not developed beyond she lost her fiancee. I have to say that Silver maybe could have turned things around for not going in the direction I knew she was as soon as the book telegraphed it fairly on. It just made the the whole book feel endless and pointless.
The other characters like Jonah, not developed, her coworkers, not developed, her sister and mother, not developed, heck Freddie was probably the best developed, and we don't really get a sense of him except in the chapters when Lydia is awake with him.
The writing isn't that great. I think the whole book just becomes beyond boring after you get past the premise which is Lydia is taking pills to be back with her dead fiancee. I think if Silver had worked in some magical realism or something to the book, maybe it would have worked better. If anything, I just kept thinking well obviously this isn't really happening and these are just dreams she's having. The book just becomes very repetitive and it doesn't help with the chapter headings calling everything "Awake". Frankly she should have called it Awake with Freddie and Awake Without or something. It was hard figuring what reality she was in after a while.
It does not help that the flow is also poor. I think the biggest issue is that Lydia is selfish as the day as long (the book shows it again and again) and I didn't get a big love story between her and her fiancee. We keep getting told via her that it was, but then we see her being stuck and seemingly wanting her fiancee's best friend to be stuck right along with her. The book is not thrilling and it's not a freaking romance. I really wish that people would stop mislabeling books like that and when you read it, you go, yeah...this isn't a romance unless you stretch really far and look at it with one eye open.
The setting of the book is of course the UK, but with a stop in Crotia. I don't know what else to say. The whole book read as so flat.
The ending.