Lodash is trying to be helpful by recursively merging subobjects

This method is like _.assign except that it recursively merges own and inherited enumerable string keyed properties of source objects into the destination object. Source properties that resolve to undefined are skipped if a destination value exists. Array and plain object properties are merged recursively. Other objects and value types are overridden by assignment. Source objects are applied from left to right. Subsequent sources overwrite property assignments of previous sources.

https://lodash.com/docs/4.17.15#merge (emphasis mine)

If you don't want this to happen, just use the standard ES6 spread operator ... or Object.assign

const object1 = { 
  name: 'John',
  age: 23,
  books: ['book1', 'book2']
};

const object2 = { 
  name: 'John',
  age: 23,
  books: ['book3'],
  city: 'London'
};

object3 = {...object1, ...object2};
object4 = Object.assign({}, object1, object2);

console.log(object3);
console.log(object4);

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You can get the result using merge and keyBy lodash functions.

var array1 = [{id:1, name:'doc1'}, {id:2, name:'doc2'}];
var array2 = [{id:1, name:'doc1'}, {id:3, name:'doc3'}, {id:4, name:'doc4'}];

var merged = _.merge(_.keyBy(array1, 'id'), _.keyBy(array2, 'id'));
var values = _.values(merged);
console.log(values);

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_.unionBy():
This method is like _.union except that it accepts iteratee which is invoked for each element of each arrays to generate the criterion by which uniqueness is computed. Result values are chosen from the first array in which the value occurs.

var original = [
  { label: 'private', value: 'private@johndoe.com' },
  { label: 'work', value: 'work@johndoe.com' }
];

var update = [
  { label: 'private', value: 'me@johndoe.com' },
  { label: 'school', value: 'schol@johndoe.com' }
];

var result = _.unionBy(update, original, "label");

console.log(result);

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