Book of the Month is a monthly book subscription box. Each month, 5 curators pick out their favorite new hardcover books, and you can choose which one you want to receive on the first of the month. You can also add up to 2 additional books for only $9.99 each. (This box was named one of the best subscriptions under $15 by MSA readers in the 2020 Subscription Box Awards.)
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About this Box
The Subscription Box: Book of the Month
The Cost: $14.99 a month
The Product: Subscribers get to pick from a selection of hardcover books each month. Skip any month you aren't interested in. Add up to two additional books for $9.99 each.
Ships to: The US for free
Book of the Month March 2020 Review
These are the five book choices for subscribers this month. I was in the mood for a romance, so I chose The Two Lives of Lydia Bird, although this romance novel seems to have a twist!
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver - Retail Value $26.00 (found here for $17.39)
Book Summary from Amazon:
Written with Josie Silver’s trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life’s crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.
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 Lydia’s twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident.
So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants is to 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 through the doorway to 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.
The story opens quite tragically at the moment when Lydia's life is altered forever just before her fiance, Freddie, is killed in a car accident. We are immersed in her world of grief and sadness, forced to empathize with her as she tries to put herself back together while her family and friends do their best to support her. Understandably, Lydia hasn't been sleeping well and so she finally gives in and tries a sleeping pill. As she dreams, she finds herself in an alternate reality in which Freddie has never died and feels as real as ever. While it's confusing and impossible, she misses him so much that she finds herself sleeping more just so that she can see him again. When she sleeps, everything is better and now that she has Freddie back, in a sense, she is starting to be able to put her life back together when she is awake. Eventually, as time goes on, she begins to build a new life on her own, one that is worth staying awake for.
I had the hardest time focusing when I first started this book (not by fault of the book, but thanks to all of the uncertainty in this strange new world of social distancing), though once I hit a certain point in this book, I couldn't put it down! Watching Lydia slowly become more like herself, but made stronger by her experience, was addicting as you root for her to overcome all of the normal things in her life that have now become so hard like going back to work or attending a co-worker's wedding. In between these pages, you have these "asleep" moments where Lydia's life carries on as though Freddie never dies, including their wedding and honeymoon, which will never happen. It's thrilling and sweet and heartbreaking all at once as you realize all of the things she will never get to experience with Freddie in her real life. I thought the pace of this novel was perfect and I really enjoyed reading about both of Lydia's worlds and felt so many emotions for her as she experienced them both.
Each month, Book of the Month includes a bookmark.
If you picked this book this month, please let me know what you think of it!
Verdict: My Book of the Month pick was emotional and engaging. There were so many moments where I was filled with empathy that ranged from being happy to sad and even proud of the main character at various points. While the story itself is tragic and filled with moments of grief, it turns into more of an uplifting story of hope and the storyline was not entirely predictable to me. I thought the story was beautifully told and it gave me all the feels! I'm happy with my pick this month and I'm even more excited to read other books from this author!
To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this book if you sign up today? No, but it may be available as an add-on next month!
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