This is a great summer read! Very easy to follow and you will fall in love with the characters relatively quickly. I enjoyed the authors ability to make the setting stand out even though I was not physically there. You will feel like you are in the middle of a Tuscan village. She does a great job with setting and character building!

When I first saw this beautiful cover on a Twitter post, I was immediately intrigued and wanted to know more about this book. After reading the book description I requested to read it on Netgalley, and was over the moon when I received the email telling me I was approved to read it. Luckily for me, it was a beautiful sunny weekend when I was able to start reading this gorgeous book.

‘Her Tuscan Summer’ is the story of Mia, an Australian woman who has battled cancer. All Mia ever wanted to do was becoming an artist, but after her battle with cancer she finds herself unable to do what she loves most: paint. When she gets the opportunity to spend her summer in Italy, she doesn’t hesitate long. What is a better place to find herself again then the gorgeous streets of Florence?

This book is definitely a much ‘cleaner’ romance novel than I’ve been reading recently. But it had this magical feeling to it, from the moment I started reading till the very last page. I was able to read a lot of this book while sitting outside with the sun shining bright, birds chirping happily and this Italian music in my head. And I felt so excited and peaceful. And this book definitely was a very fun relaxing read to it.

The romance between Mia and Luca, wasn’t something I could really connect to or feel. I missed the chemistry between them and I honestly thought there was something a little off about Luca.
Mia’s character was one I also had some trouble with. Mostly because she just seemed a little immature to me at times. And I found her age a bit confusing. She is supposed to be the age of an woman starting college after high school, but at times I thought she was much older.. and then she would react a certain way and I would think she was this teenager again. But fortunately, the writing and the story was nice enough to keep me hooked, and I enjoyed going on these trips through Italy with them.

The best thing about ‘Her Tuscan Summer’ to me was definitely the setting in Italy, and these little moments the author gives us inside the mind of an artist. I loved reading how Mia would have these feelings and she was able to paint them. I would have loved to see her paintings in real life.

I’ve only been to Italy once. And it was a work trip to Milan, so I’m sure I haven’t seen the real Italy yet. But after reading this book I’m even more determined to visit there someday soon. ‘Her Tuscan Summer’ was definitely a fun read that gives you a holiday feeling.

Her Tuscan Summer is a story of friendships, finding love, grief and healing. Florence comes to life in a spectacular way in this novel and I want to visit the city right now. The beautiful paintings and the panorama are brilliantly brought to life by the author. The characters in this story are going through grief and how that grief makes them take some tough choices is the crux of the story. Grief and love go hand in hand in this novel and sometimes it becomes little hard not to have tears while reading. A beautiful story with a beautiful setting. Keep tissues handy though.

I absolutely loved Carnevale's previous book "A child of my own", and I could find the same beautiful prose, wonderful storytelling and great, relatable characters in this book as well.
With the added bonus of the magic description of Italian landscapes.
Unluckily I couldn't really connect with the main character Mia, because she's so much younger than my own age, and, though this book is so much more than her love story with Italian mechanic Luca, nonetheless the part about the love story is so young and innocent and naive that it's really too much for this old cynic.
Anyway that's only a purely personal opinion, which doesn't take anything away from the beauty of this book. Another great one by Vanessa Carnevale.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

So good!! I totally recommend. I adored this book it was cute and sweet and the perfect summer/spring read.

Thank you for the advance copy to read and review.

On the surface this story is about a beautiful summer in Tuscany but the story covers so many hard to experience life events as well.

Mia is a young Australian artist who moves to Florence after battling cancer. She is in remission but lives in fear that the cancer will return.

After moving she quickly makes special new friends, her roommate Stella and her boyfriend Paulo, her cousin Luca that she falls in love with, Silvio at the bar and her employer and art dealer Clara. Several of her new friends are also dealing with their own grief.

Luca has lost both parents in a car accident, Clara lost her two year old daughter to a heart defect.

Slowly as Mia’s soul heals, she is able to start painting again and opening her heart to happiness again.

I really enjoyed revisiting special spots from my travels to Italy, and appreciated how dealing with grief and sadness is dealt with honestly in this book. Only con is that I wasn’t too crazy about the first person, present tense language used.

3.5 Stars
Mia Moretti travels from Melbourne to Florence to heal from the psychological and emotional scars left by a life-threatening condition. She also wants to get back her art and paint again.
She meets a local mechanic, Luca, who sweeps her away across the country, making her smile, help her face her fears, and paint again. But when a tragedy strikes them, can they let love keep them together, or will it tear them apart?
I picked the book for its setting more than anything else. The story started out great, and that was a plus. The writing is easy to follow, and I finished the book in two days. The imagery is beautiful (obviously, it’s Italy!), and I could picture it with ease. More so because I’m a fan of David Rocco and watched his Dolce Vita series set in Florence, Sicily, Amalfi, and Napoli.
After a light 2/3 of the book, the last 1/3 went totally out of balance. Though the book talks about Mia’s recovery from cancer, it doesn’t get too intense until after 65% or so. And then, it almost gets overwhelming, pushing one heavy emotion after another on the reader.
There’s little breathing space, and that too is shadowed by intense agony and grief. This unexpected shift didn’t work for me. The tone was set by then, and I knew there would be some conflict. But based on what flowed until then, I wasn’t expecting something this forceful. It does have a decent happy ending, but I only heaved a sigh of relief that the book was over.
Maybe if the story has a non-linear narration to space out things, it would have been easier to handle. Also, the insta-love would have had a better chance of convincing the readers.
What surprised me was the age of the characters, which slipped my mind after the initial chapter or two. Mia is 19 years old. Yeah, she’s quite mature for her age (not always, mind you), but the book is a typical romance and reads like the one with 25+ characters. Though 19 is not terribly young, she is still a teen and acts like one only when the author needs some ripples or touches of conflict.
The talk of art was lovely to read. There was nothing technical, and the focus is on how Mia lets go and starts to embrace her talent. The side characters are well-etched and do their bit to bring some cheer into the book.
If not for the 1/3rd of the book, where Mia’s character is developed, and Luca is almost messed up, this one would have been a four-star for me.
Overall, it’s an enjoyable read with a wonderful setting, but be prepared for an extra-emotional last section and some heavy drama.
I received an ARC from NetGalley and Bookouture and am voluntarily leaving a review.
#HerTuscanSummer #NetGalley

BOOK REVIEW
Her Tuscan Summer By: Vanessa Carnevale
Pub Date: 6/3

Mia Moretti is a young, talented artist who has won her painful battle with cancer. Nine months into her remission, Mia finds herself afraid of the cancer returning and what her future holds. Her inspiration and ease of painting has not yet returned like she had hoped. Mia travels to Florence, Italy hoping to find herself and possibly bring out her artistic abilities that have been hidden since her diagnosis with cancer. In Florence, Mia meets Luca, a man who offers her a love that tests her courage and strength. A love that brings back her passion for creating beautiful paintings and also teaches her to live every day one moment at a time. Can Mia learn to live each day and experience each moment without feeling fear about what future holds?

Her Tuscan Summer was truly a beautiful love story filled with so many teachable lessons. When Mia meets Luca, their love and connection is so captivating that you can’t help but root for them. This story makes you realize how precious life is and when you find such a rare love, you hold on to it and cherish it. To add to the beauty of this book, Vanessa Carnevale describes Italy in the most vivid and breathtaking ways. You feel as if you are there and experiencing the Italian culture. It was such a pleasure to read this transfixing story of love and courage.

Content Warning: Cancer, Death of parents.

This book is a wonderful reminder to embrace each day full of gratitude and the expectations of great things. Living in fear only creates a small universe and continual feelings of being empty. Yes, what Mia experienced was truly frightening as she fought to regain her health; but by changing her perspective in coming to Italy did both her and her paintings regain color and joy. That is how her love for Luca deepened each day and they were stronger together. Nothing was too adverse as long ad they had each other.

I thought this was going to be a fun women's fiction adjacent story of a woman finding herself - and an HEA - through a visit to Tuscany. I knew, thanks to the book's description, that a plot element of the book would be the heroine's past struggle with cancer. If the novel had been a frothy confection, filled with descriptions of panzanella, romance on the Punto Vecchio, background Italian characters who gesticulate and clown around like "an animated Roberto Benigni from Life is Beautiful," and an impossibly gorgeous Italian boyfriend who's been waiting for someone just like the heroine to fall in love with, along with some gentle ruminations on what it means to embrace life following illness, I would've been here for that. I generally am enthusiastic about timeworn stories of finding love abroad, characters who spend vast amounts of time mushily declaring their love for each other in gorgeous scenery, or infodumps on Italy. I mean, it has all those things, but that's not what the novel is about. Instead, it's a story about grief and trauma in an Italian setting that gratuitously exploits illness and suffering for drama.

I did not expect illness, physical malady and grief to be the most relevant fact about every single character and the book's only source of conflict. The heroine Mia is in remission from Hodgkins' Lymphoma. She is a character with no significant flaws except her illness. Oh no, she better not get too close to anyone, especially the hero, because she might die someday and then they'd miss her - that's almost all the conflict in a nutshell. Rather than being portrayed as a dimensional person who has an illness, she is entirely characterized by illness. It overshadows her artistic talents, which are genius-level according to every character we meet. Mia's fear of dying is the only thing holding her back her from massive artistic success, and of course she just has to Believe In Herself to eventually overcome this. She also, at one point, paints the Punto Vecchio by not looking at it initially? I don't quite know how that works, but it's hardly the chief concern here.

Her boyfriend Luca has also experienced immense personal tragedy which occurred only a few months before he meets Mia. He seems untroubled by his personal loss, content to put on a happy face, flirt like Mia's the only girl he's ever seen despite being the hottest guy in Impertuna, and to demand nothing of Mia in terms of emotional support or reciprocal partnership. He is less a character than a collection of motivational quotes about Living Life To The Fullest and You Never Know What Tomorrow Will Bring So Enjoy the Now. A street artist Mia meets is notable for the fact he grieves his dead wife by painting her. The woman who eventually employs Mia is struggling because she's also lost someone dear to her. Mia comforts her through The Power Of Art, Which Can Heal All Wounds, another theme written so overtly that it seemed downright insensitive to consider how it would land with anyone who'd gone through an experience of grief similar to this character's. Maybe for some people, being shown art without warning, with a relative stranger standing by, that depicts your lost love one, would be healing. For others (I'd wager most others) it'd be massively insensitive.

Mia seems to be presented as a "good" character because she is obsessed by minimizing the outfall of her illness on others. She worries about her parents and how they'd feel losing her. She worries about her boyfriend, and how he'd feel losing her, if her cancer were to come back and she died. At times, she behaves downright childishly because of her obsession with not being burdensome. She puts herself in danger by participating in risky activities while feeling ill, to not prevent others from having fun or causing them to worry about her if she were to stay at the hotel. Instead of talking through her fears withe her friends or partner, or responsibly caring for her own needs like a grown adult, she pushes people away with stubborn insistence she is fine, and with childish tantrums intended to distance her boyfriend from her, to lessen his pain at her eventual feared loss. This occasions their superlatively mind-reading care of the sort she needs and honestly doesn't deserve.

The novel's dark moment is driven by a reversal in fortune, where the hero suddenly becomes more in need of care than the heroine. And when this happened, it gave me serious pause, because it seemed like the novel was saying something a bit more sinister than, "this girl with cancer still deserves love," as it'd been saying at top volume for a hundred pages. The hero, of course, thanks to his newfound condition, performs the heroine's now-familiar routine of, "you cannot love me because I will be a burden to you." And this trope - it's not new. It's the stuff of what we might call trauma porn, where characters are made interesting for their extremely noble, self-abnegating behaviour in the face of immense suffering they don't deserve. There are hundreds of other books depicting romance impeded by disability and illness. It is not something the author invented.

But for a book released in 2021, shouldn't we be a bit more sensitive to the way we fictionalize people with illnesses and disabilities? Because, to be fair, while the concluding note of the HEA is that BOTH these ill/disabled characters deserve love, and are not diminished as persons by being ill/disabled (and, to be extra fair, the hero is not magically healed of his condition in the end, which had been alarmingly foreshadowed by some nonsense about "believing in miracles" shouted at a doctor), both of them go on about how they are burdensome and instigators of other people's pain and suffering for pages, in ways that seem disturbingly ableist. And of course, internalized ableism is a thing recognizable in the real world that the author didn't invent, either. But if we, culturally, didn't still problematically echo this idea, that people are made saintly for bearing the burden of a chronically ill or disabled partner, this trope wouldn't still be a thing. This book parrots the notion that both disabled/ill characters are noble because they perceive their illness and disabilities as burdens on others, themselves as less worthy of love than able-bodied people, and they try to prevent others from suffering the pain of loving them.

Also, they don't have actually have a relationship with any depth. I sincerely enjoy an over-the-top scene where the characters just bat their eyes at each other breathlessly and talk about how much they love each other, but that is all these two ever do. When they aren't declaring their love to be the truest thing they've ever known after dating for a couple of months and making terrifying promises of "forever" that are founded on nothing, they are weeping about how one of them is a burden on the other who doesn't deserve their love.

The heat level is somewhere below fade-to-black because there's nothing to fade from; there's some on-page kissing and removal of clothing, but that's it.

Content warnings: ableism. Cancer, death of a child (no graphic details on page), multiple car accidents (no graphic details on-page)

Say you can create the most beautiful things and suddenly life happens. All your energy has to go to this battle and when you come on top, you are devasted once again. Your talent seems to have vanished. Your mind is filled with dark thoughts, which is totally understandable, and that seems to be the only thing your hands are able to recreate. 
Besides that there is that all consuming fear for the future. What if you have to start this war all over again? Will you have the strength or will you have to give up?
You are not the only suffering, but you see the pain in the eyes of the people close to you. You see what it does to them and it hurts you deeply.

Maybe a change of scenery is what you need, for yourself and everyone around you and then you are offered the perfect opportunity to heal or try to do so.
Little by little you start climbing out of this dark pit and it's all thanks to one person. Life is wonderful again until it's not...

When you read this book, you feel like you don't need to travel to Tuscany, because the author described everything so brilliantly. On the other hand though, it seduces you to go there and see, feel and smell it all for yourself. Maybee soon... :)
It's a beautiful story where dark clouds and sunny skies alternate and your hearts breaks several times until it's glued together until eternity.  5 stars

Thank you, Vanessa Carnevale and Bookouture

Thanks to Netgalley for the digital ARC for my honest review!

Reading this book is like watching a wonderful romantic movie. It's definitely a perfect summer read!

It's so relaxing for me to read a book set in a beautiful exotic European town. Probably because we haven't been able to go anywhere for the past months. This book is such a romantic getaway.

It is filled with hope and love and a little more drama than I expected. Mia and Luca are so great for each other. I just love how the inspire and heal each other!

Highly recommend!

Mia is in remission, and decides to leave Australia and spend time in Florence. Meeting hunky Luca just adds to the adventure. Enjoyed this one, and although has some sadness it also has a HEA. Highly recommend this book and author. Hard to put this one down.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an early review copy.

Absolutely Fabulous Read

Mia has dreamed of being an artist. After a fierce But after a fierce battle with a devastating illness, now she’s terrified it’ll come back and she’s also upset that she can’t paint, not like she used to, meaning giving up a place she got at art school.

Then, she sees an chance, to spend the summer in Italy, Mia takes if and hopes that hung these and being in and around the city, she can heal and maybe find the love she’s lost if painting.

Coming to Italy was to find herself again, what she didn’t expect, was to meet a handsome mechanic, and soon she’s falling for him, and with life once again.

But just when she’s letting go of her past, there’s a tragedy.

So, will Mia be able to overcome this and continue enjoying her new life, or will she go back to her old self again?

Her Tuscan Summer is a wonderful feel good book which brings to life the Tuscan scenery and the Italian way of life. Mia and Luis both fight through their own health issues and demons - with the support of family and friends, Will they come out at the other end? It's for you to read the book to find out. There are timeswhen you will laugh with them and times when you will cry with them. Enjoy it.

Nice setting and sentimental value after Mia ups and leaves Australia to start over after cancer. Enter Luca.
Lots of nice romantic scenes. Great to transport to a new place whilst feeling stuck in lockdown. Like the way painting was introduced. Ending is packed with drama.

With grateful thanks to netgalley and Vanessa Carnevale for an arc in return for an honest opinion.
New author for me and I was absolutely delighted to read this fabulous book that is so well done it was a total joy to read fabulous characters and plot can highly recommend.

Her Tuscan Summer by Vanessa Carnevale will delight from the first page! Her writing style always immerses me, and her characters pull me right into the plot. I felt as though I was back enjoying the summer in Tuscany with Carnevale’s vivid descriptions of food, coffee, and sights.

In an attempt at rejuvenation after being physically and creatively exhausted, 24-year-old Mia heads to Florence. She’s just been told her Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is in remission and she’s hoping the city that inspired the Renaissance artists will inspire her to paint again.

Carnevale has taken the fear of death and transformed it into hope and love; about living, loving, discovering who you are and what you mean to those you surround yourself with. She writes about embracing the events that lead you to the present, letting go of the past while remembering how it has shaped you and embracing the future. I loved Carnevale’s reminder: prendiamo la vita come viene! (take life as it comes). This book focuses on the importance of living in the present and staying passionate about the things that mean most.

While on a European vacation after high school, Carnevale met her future husband one night when her tour group stopped for dinner in Florence. The young waiter asked her to dance and the rest is history. They’ve been married for 17 years. Like Mia, Carnevale journeyed from Melbourne to Florence and was swept off her feet by a romantic Italian. I'm sure you can agree, writing about an experience brings authenticity to her novel. You may have noticed this debut novel previously published as The Florentine Bridge.

This clean romance and emotionally charged tale of young love will pull at your heartstrings and have you dreaming of Tuscany.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Vanessa Carnevale for sharing this arc copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.
So, this book was written by a Australian author and it came out in Australia in 2016?. So I had heard about this book and it got really good word of mouth.

Vanessa Carnevale is a new author for me and I really liked this book! Her character, Mia Moretti arrived in Florence, she was unsure of her feelings. Her confidence was at an all-time low, but she was in remission from cancer – had been for nine months but she was unable to paint; her voice and creativity had left her and she had no idea how to get it back.

well she meets a striking local man.. he showed her how to feel again.. How to paint again and how to live again and how to love..

the scenery in this book is stunning, Set against the magnificent locale of Florence, Italy and surrounds

really liked this book!

A beautifully written book following the love story of Luca and Mia. The journey through Florence and the Amalfi coast is almost like a holiday as the writing is so descriptive you could be one of the tourists. Luca helps Mia come to terms with her past and start to paint again but then Mia is there to support Luca too

There are likeable supporting characters portraying strong Italian family snd friendship relationships. This is a very moving love story that has a twist I didn’t expect