Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Meeting Lydia by Linda MacDonald! My thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for the invitation to join and to the publisher for my review copy!
Author : Linda MacDonald
Title : Meeting Lydia
Pages : 321
Publisher : Matador
Publication date : March 22, 2018
When Marianne comes home from work one day to find her husband talking to a glamorous woman in the kitchen, insecurities resurface from a time when she was bullied at school. Jealousy rears its head and her marriage begins to fall apart. Desperate for a solution, she finds herself trying to track down her first schoolgirl crush: Edward Harvey. Even thinking his name made her tingle with half-remembered childlike giddiness. Edward Harvey, the only one from Brocklebank to whom she might write if she found him.
Meeting Lydia is a thought-provoking and sometimes moving account about relationships and growing old(er). At an age where you’re supposed to have it all figured out, insecurities crop up. Never mind a grey hair or two, what’s with all these wrinkles and saggy bits? Not helped by the fact that you feel time is running out. Is your life all you thought it would be? What happened to your ambitions and dreams? What if you’d done this or said that when you were younger? Would your life have been different?
Marianne’s concerns and feelings are undoubtedly familiar to quite a few of us. She was bullied quite severely as a young child, an experience that still affects her to this day. So when she returns home one day and finds her husband, Johnny, in the kitchen talking to a glamorous colleague, all her old insecurities resurface. Is she not beautiful or sexy enough anymore? Jealousy rears its ugly head and while Marianne is also forced to deal with the dreaded menopause, her marriage begins to fall apart.
In her time of need, Marianne turns to an old classmate. A boy she used to have a crush on, one who didn’t bully her. It is in talking to him and facing her past that she and her husband may still have a future together. I must say that this correspondence didn’t quite turn out the way I expected it to and while it is explained why Marianne decides to turn to this person, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that. The more interesting conversations are the ones Marianne has in her head, where she talks about things she doesn’t communicate in person.
Meeting Lydia covers a variety of interesting topics. From relationships both in “real life” and online, to menopause, to bullying and its effects. It explores human behaviour, not just through Marianne’s life but also through the psychology lessons she teaches her students. You’d think Marianne would follow her own advice but as they say “those who can’t do, teach”, I suppose.
Relationships take work and communication is key. Nobody is a mind-reader and that’s probably for the best. But in this case, I’d say Marianne’s struggles put a strain on her marriage that could possibly have been avoided if she’d known how to talk about and tackle her feelings. Will she be able to find some self-confidence and stand up for herself? Can her marriage be saved? And who is this Lydia? You’ll have to find out for yourself when you read this honest, realistic and relatable story about how the past and unresolved issues can affect your future, no matter how old you are.
Meeting Lydia is available to buy!
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Kobo | Goodreads
Linda MacDonald was born and brought up in Cockermouth, Cumbria. She was educated at the local grammar school and later at Goldsmiths’, University of London where she studied for a BA in psychology and then a PGCE in biology and science. She taught in a secondary school in Croydon for eleven years before taking some time out to write and paint. In 1990 she returned to teaching at a sixth form college in south-east London where she taught psychology. For over twenty-five years she was also a visiting tutor in the psychology department at Goldsmiths’. She has now given up teaching to focus fully on writing.
Author link : Twitter
Novel Deelights 
Thanks for the fabulous blog tour support Eva x
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