Review: The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this, and for the first hundred or so pages, I did! Lydia experiences the loss of her fiancé, Freddie, and is given pills to help her sleep. What she finds when she takes them, however, is that while asleep she is transported to a world where Freddie is alive and well and their relationship is intact. The chapters then randomly switch between alternate universes for Lydia—one in which she grieves and another in which she and Freddie are a couple.

The premise, though far fetched, is attractive for its possibilities. Anyone who has loved and lost certainly has thought about the “what if’s”, and Lydia actually gets to experience them first hand. Beyond the premise, though, the book just falls short of being engaging and instead slogs along, mired in melodrama and angst. Additionally, Josie Silver’s use of the color pink, over and over, fails to serve a clear purpose and feels redundant. Beyond that, the chapters are slow, and the progress is so leisurely that it’s painful. Finally, the conclusion is predictable and cliche, obvious from the first ten pages. Perhaps a hundred less pages and a more condensed version of the story would have helped.

Overall, great idea poorly executed.

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