The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

January 1, 2020
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 worlds--real 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. Jonah--the third in their group, Lydia's one-time best friend before Freddie moved to town, and a constant, friendly presence in her life from childhood--is 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 her--her sister, her mother, her co-workers, Jonah--even 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.

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Starred review from January 13, 2020
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.

Starred review from February 15, 2020
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)