Love Island star Lydia Karakyriakou has shared some behind the scenes snaps after her time on the ITV2 dating show.
The Glasgow influencer entered the show as part of the Casa Amor line up alongside five other girls hoping to find a connection in the South African villa. Lydia, 22, shared snippets from before Love Island where she could be seen excitedly talking on the phone as well as packing her clothes ahead of flying out.
Sharing sweet clips saying goodbye to her pals at the airport, Lydia wrote over the video: "When you quit your job to travel to South Africa for a dating show >>>," accompanied by David Guetta's hit song Memories. She captioned her social media post: "It may have been short lived but it’s an experience I’ll never forget".
Despite not being picked to remain in the villa at the Casa Amor recoupling, Lydia formed a connection with fellow contestant Tom Clare but he ultimately decided to remain with his original partner Samie Elishi.
After being dumped from the Villa, Lydia doesn't have any bad feelings towards Tom after he chose to remain with Samie.
Lydia said: "For me, it was very 50/50, it could have gone either way. There wasn’t any indication at all that Tom was saying he and Samie had something really good, or that they were really strong.
"Any comment like that would have made me think, ‘Right ok, it could definitely be Samie.’ So I definitely was surprised. At the same time, I obviously understood. But it wasn’t nice to hear.
"I don’t know why Tom didn’t choose to couple up with me and give himself longer to get to know me, as he said he wanted to give me the same time and effort as he gave to Samie.
"For me it felt like he did want to continue things and see if it could be more than what they had. It was a whirlwind. It went so, so quick. As much as I’m obviously gutted to leave as I’d have liked to have experienced it a bit more. The girls got along so well, we clicked so well, it was such a good group dynamic.
"I did think I was making a genuine connection with someone as well so it obviously felt great. It was all good... obviously until the dumping!"
Discussing her short but sweet time on the dating show on Instagram, Lydia did reveal she wasn't too happy about going in Casa Amor.
When asked by a fan during a Q&A if she was happy to be a 'Casa girl', Lydia responded honestly with a big 'No'. She said: "If I'm being completely honest I feel like everyone was told the same thing that we were all just gonna be bombshells basically but I don't know if they class Casa as a bombshell.
She continued: "But no, I would not have wanted to go through Casa Amor because it is a very short period of time and it's very hard to show your personality when you're mainly just needing to fire into people. It was difficult but at the same time going in with the five other girls, we were like a wee girl band it was great.
"Being thrown in with people that were in the exact same position as you so it had its ups and downs but if I had to chose I would have preferred to be in the starting line-up or just a general bombshell."
Love Island continues tonight on ITV2 and ITX.
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