When the Apricots Bloom and The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

 I recently read two more books: When the Apricots Bloom by Gina Wilkinson and The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver.  The first one I had never heard of and received for Mother's Day.  The second one I kept seeing recommended on Facebook book sites and decided to try it.

When the Apricots Bloom is a story of three women living in Iraq at the time that Saddam Hussein was their leader.  Two of the women, Huda and Rania, had been childhood friends and they are rather reluctantly reunited as they both face the fear of losing their children to the Iraq regime. Huda was working as a secretary at the Australian embassy and was ordered to befriend Ally, the deputy ambassador's wife, in order to learn any information against America. All three woman have their own secrets and have to trust each other in order to help each other.

This was a good story and I ended up quite liking it!

I really struggled with The Two Lives of Lydia Bird and about halfway through it I almost gave up on reading it, but I was waiting for another book to arrive in the mail, so I continued on with it and was very glad that I did!

This novel was about Lydia Bird, who was engaged to her love, Freddie Hunter. Sadly, on her birthday, Freddie was killed in a car accident on his way to meet her. Jonah, their best friend, was also in the car and he just had a minor injury. As Lydia struggled with her loss, she found that if she took one of the pills that the doctor had prescribed for her to help her sleep she would enter into an alternative universe (my words) where Freddie was still alive and she was with him. So she was really living in two worlds as she continued to grieve. 

It was here that the book started to get old to me.  But then, Lydia had to face some big challenges that she rose up to, and her life and her perspective began to change. In the end, the book was quite hopeful, but not in a sappy way.

"You don't get over losing someone you love in six months or two years or twenty, but you do have to find a way to carry on living without feeling as if everything that comes afterward is second best.  Some people walk up mountains, others throw themselves out of planes.  Everyone has to find their own way back, and if they're lucky they'll have people who love them to hold their hand."

Two Jane Harper novels

 As I wrote earlier, I had read The Dry by Jane Harper and loved it.  So now I have read two earlier books of hers and while they were good, The Dry definitely is my favorite. She has a new book out that I am waiting for in paperback that doesn't come out in paperback until January 2022.  Ugh. Also, did I mention before that The Dry is being made into a movie?

So, as I said, I have read two more:

1) Force of Nature by Jane Harper: you know those retreats that companies have that are supposed to be bonding experiences for the employees?  Well, this is about one of those where five women were taken to a lodge, then sent out with a map for a five-day journey into the Australian wilderness.  But only four of the women returned, and the four women had different stories about Alice, the missing woman. Alice was a whistleblower in a case Detective Aaron Falk was working on, so he was drawn into the search.

This book was a good read, and I liked how it was written.  The story was told from each of the five women's perspectives, which I thought added to the story.  It was a good mystery!

2) the second book I read was The Lost Man by Jane Harper: this is another good mystery that takes place in the Australian outback. Two brothers, Bub and Nathan who hadn't seen each other for a long time, came together after one of them found their third brother, Cameron, dead out in the outback. Bub had lived on Cameron's place, with Cameron's wife and children, so Nathan, and his son who was visiting at the time, went to stay at Cameron's home to help the family deal with their loss and, hopefully, find out what had happened to Cameron. There was also the issue that Cameron and his family lived in the old family home, so who inherits the land and the home?

  So right now it's 3 for 3 for Jane Harper's books!