Katy and her mom planned a trip to Positano together, where Carol visited before she met her husband and had Katy. Before they can go on this trip, Carol succumbs to her cancer, and Katy decides to go on this trip alone.

I didn’t love Katy, her personality and whole identity were tied to her mother. With Carol gone, Katy didn’t know who she was at the beginning of the novel, and I’m not 100% sure she found herself. I think Serle wrote Positano well - I could picture everything she was describing, almost to the point of being able to smell the salty air and taste the food.

The grief was real in this, and I felt so moved by it. Serle did a fantastic job of describing the process of grieving that moved me to tears in some places.

One Italian Summer is without a doubt a love story. However, rather than being your typical romance, the love story at the centre of this book is the one between the Katy and her mother, Carol. With its first person narration, One Italian Summer at times feels like you’re having an intimate chat with an old friend, while at other times it feels like one long-internalized monologue. Katy is far from a likable or sympathetic character. Other than her mother, whom she idolizes to an almost unhealthy level, Katy truly has no regard for others and tends to just use people for her own selfish wants and needs. I also felt that her ending was undeserved as it would have been better if the mother-daughter relationship was fleshed out more, especially after the big reveal. Instead, everything was wrapped up all too neatly and quickly in the end. Still, I did enjoy Serle’s writing, and I loved the Italian islands setting of this book. So while One Italian Summer is far from a perfect book, it can potentially be a good beach/vacation read as it’s a quick novel that you can easily escape into. Fans of the Mamma Mia movies, particularly the second one, may find some familiar comfort in the lush island setting and close knit mother-daughter relationship of One Italian Summer.

I'd seen mixed reviews on this one but was eager to read it for myself...and I'm so glad I did! I listened to the audio and it was wonderful hearing all the descriptions of the gorgeous settings and the food. I also found the storyline unique with the elements of magical realism. The main character, Katy, was a bit over the top for me and how she talked about her mother being her one true love in life.
Overall, a great story. So glad I read this one, and was given the opportunity to do by the publisher and NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

If you tell me "Magical Realism" is in a book, I more than likely will assume I'm not going to like it (unless it's about witches of course), however the gut wrenching way Serle's writing makes the unbelievable, believable would prove that I am wrong and I in fact LOVE this type of magical realism in a book. One Italian Summer take us to Positano Italy with Katy after her mother has passed away. Through this journey, Katy is able to process her grief, become closer to the mother she lost, and in turn find herself and help figure out who she is now that she's lost her best friend. This book truly made me feel like I was on vacation in Italy, and when I found out it was set in a real hotel, and looked up the views from said hotel, I can tell you that Serle's descriptions are spot on because it was exactly as I imagined. I loved this book, and I am ready to plan a trip to Italy now!

This is my second Rebecca Searle book after reading The Dinner List.

To enjoy her books, you need to be able to escape reality as there is a touch of fantasy but it did not bother me at all.

The best thing about this book is the location. I feel I just came back from Positano. I walked the streets with her, visited the hotels, ate with her. I even found myself googling the places mentioned as they are all real. In that aspect, I give it a 5!

I enjoyed the relationship between mother and daughter and the author did a good job describing it. The relationship with the husband was a bit harder for me to understand especially after the idyllic context and meetings with Adam. I didn’t get how her relationship with Adam helps her decide her future. I feel the ending of the book was wrapped up too fast and I didn’t quite understand how her trip made her evolve.

If you love Italy, this is a must-read!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me a complimentary e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

This book made me want to jump on a plane ride to Italy and never come back. As someone who is dealing with the reality of aging parents - it also hits you right in the heartstrings.

Beautifully writing as always by Rebecca Serle. Can’t wait for her next book!

If you want to be transported to Italy ASAP, this is 100000% the book for you!

Read if you like:
🤞🏻 Best friendships between mom/daughter
🪄 Magical realism
💭 Living a dream ?!
✊🏼 Women’s fiction
🍝🍷🪤 Pasta, wine and cheese
📚 LIKED: MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE, THE LIGHT WE LOST

Imagine your best friend in the whole world dies before y’all are supposed to go on *the* trip of your lives 🥺 Katy is heartbroken after her mom passes away and decides to take the trip to Italy anyway! Who would’ve thought she got more than she bargained for???

Overall, this was a highly anticipated read of mine and I enjoyed it!! I had some qualms about Katy as a character… but the mother/daughter bond is everything 🥺 that ending, too?! 😭😭

4/5 :)

-interesting blurb with a unique plot

-intriguing and gripping, a decent mystery
-loved seeing how her marriage worked out and how she sorted her thoughts
-all very wholesome and made me tear up at the end
-loved seeing how she got to know her mother again and slowly understood her better in a different way

-sometimes, I couldn't understand her thoughts and decisions, for example, with her husband Eric. I know this was a way to show a flaw in character, but I just thought that it could've been better executed.

-overall a solid book.

Any book that starts with a Lorelai Gilmore quote is destined to be a book that this reader will love. And so it was!

Katy Silver, our first person POV narrator, is a thirty year-old freelance copywriter, married to Eric, a dorkily handsome Disney film executive, living in Culver City, California.

Their life together, before this narrative begins, is something of an enigma. Which is telling, as Katy’s story, as it begins, is not about her love and life with Eric at all.

For Katy is in love with her mother, Carol. Not romantically (of course) but with the dreamy somewhat adolescent love that comes with worshipping a beautiful, confident woman (remember this is Katy’s story) who always knows what to do and say, and is the perfect guide to answer any question, frame any decision, that life may pose. Including (perhaps especially?) those concerning Katy.

Until the day Carol succumbs to a terrible illness.

“I cannot yet conceive of a world without her, what that will look like, who I am in her absence.”

As the bottom, the center, the entire essence of her world collapses into fragments around her, Katy finds questions, and more questions, crowding her mind, including inevitably. - How do I go on, without her? And, do I have a marriage that can sustain me?

“There was no relationship above ours. I was her one, just like she was mine.”

Her emotional cliff crumbling, Katy embarks on a trip to Positano - a beautiful and memorable area of Italy that figured large and integral in her mothers life. Her grief her only beacon, Katy’s need to reconnect with her mother’s early life, is primal, a puppy drawn to a fading beam of sunlight, any warmth at all her salvage.

Poignant and evocative, Katy’s story, as it unfolds, is beautifully rich, both with the splendor of her surroundings, and the immediacy of her anguish.

How do our long-lived narratives, held unquestioned, influence our reality?

Who do we, ultimately, belong to?

And can one summer, lived with abandon in the timeless beauty of Positano, Italy, - where past and present mysteriously merge - help Katy uncover her release?

A great big thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

One Italian Summer • Rebecca Serle ⭐️ - 3.5
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This is my second book by Rebecca Serle. The first was In Five Years and I went into it thinking it was going to be one way but it was completely different and affected my review on that book. So this book I thought I would go in with an open mind, and that worked out well!

The scenery in this book is absolutely beautiful some of the best I have read and kudos to Rebecca on transporting the reader right along with Katy throughout Italy. Also the food in the book sounds amazing defiantly don’t read it on an empty stomach!

I did enjoy the mother daughter relationship Katy and Carol had and I know that some people do have that type of relationship but reflecting I found Kaye to be very dependant on her mom. She seemed absolutely lost without her mom and I’m not just meaning in the sense that you feel lost when you lose a loved one but she came across as extremely lost. She truely believes that her mom is her one Greta love and that she is her mothers in return, just completely disregarding both of their spouses.
I felt bad for Eric for multiple reasons. I personally couldn’t understand how she wouldn’t depend on him during this tough time ad basically shut him out. As the book goes on I did continue to feel bad for Eric during situations, and I know it is a big part of the book however I wasn’t a fan of it and I almost wished that it wasn’t apart of it or wasn’t taken as far.

But in the end I am happy with the ending and that Katy realized what she had and was able to see that sh can get through this.


⚠️: Death or a parent, Cheating, Abandonment

Read if you like: books about self-discovery after loss, mother-daughter relationships.
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Katy’s mothers death hits her hard as her mother was her best friend. Katy decides to go on the trip to Italy that they had planned to go on together before her mom got sick, hoping the trip will help her deal with her mother’s death and bring her closer to her mother. What she doesn’t expect is to actually see the younger version of her mother- alive.
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I loved the exploration of the relationship between mothers and daughters. Katy thinks she knows her mother well but her death makes her realize this isn’t the case.
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I also loved the exploration of grief and loss after losing someone close to you.
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CW: death, grief, abandonment, minor sexual content, adultery.

Summary
Katy Silver's best friend was her mother Carol. They were each other's number one, above all else, including their husbands. Her mom was perfect; she did everything right, and always had the right answer. Katy trusted her unreservedly, and her mom's word was gospel. So when Carol dies Katy cannot imagine continuing her life as it is without her mother. She begins questioning everything including her job, career, and most importantly her marriage. Having lost her entire sense of personhood along with her mother, she packs her bags and goes to Positano, Italy, a town in which her mother had spent a summer in back in her early 30s, and had always dreamed of going back to. When Carol got sick, she and Katy finally planned the trip, now a week after her funeral, Katy is going alone looking to make sense of a world without her mother. But when she arrives on the Amalfi Coast she finds that there's more to Positano than the beautiful sights and the warm Italian sun; here she finds Carol in the flesh and younger than Katy's ever known her to be. As Katy tries to make sense of how she's seeing a version of her mother that predates her, she learns that while her mother may have known everything about her, Katy does not know everything about her mother. As secrets are unveiled, and new lovers come into play, Katy becomes more unsure than ever.

Thoughts
I usually like to match the books I read to the season they’re set in, but Rebecca Serle’s descriptions of the picturesque Amalfi Coast transported me from this bleak Canadian winter to the warm and lively town of Positano, Italy. I immediately had to make a Pinterest board board and a playlist so I could really immerse myself in the experience of reading this book. The author’s attention to detail brought the words to life; the entire time I was reading I had Google Maps open beside me and I was searching up all the restaurants, hotels, and locations; they were all real and they looked exactly as she described.

More so than the vivid descriptions, this book is about loss. When Katy’s mother dies, she knows that event has changed her irreparably. The person she was before, is gone, and she must now face her life as someone else, someone who doesn’t know if their old life fulfills them any longer. This book is Katy’s journey of self-discovery. She goes to Positano looking to feel closer to her mother, and in the process she discovers herself.

This was such a beautiful book that explored the mother-daughter connection and relationship. It really made me think of my own relationship with my mother and the shortcomings we have as mothers and as daughters. I think the mother-daughter relationship is complex and entrenched in generational traumas that are passed down maternally. I only have the perspective of a daughter, and Carol allowed me to reflect on motherhood from the perspective of a young mother who isn't exactly sure if motherhood is what she wants.

When I went to look up the author’s backlist, it was to my surprise that I found she wrote When You Were Mine, a book that’s been sitting on my shelf for a decade, the first book to make me cry, and the book that made me fall in love with tragic romance. I can happily say that I’ve been a fan of Rebecca Serle’s since childhood, and I greatly appreciate having the opportunity to fall in love with her writing again as an adult.

Rating: 5/5

Another hit by Rebecca Serle! I raced through this story about a grieving daughter and the magical way she reconnects with her mother. I felt like I was visiting Positano, which I hopefully am this summer!

I originally started reading this book as an arc but wasn’t able to finish it on time. However i thoroughly enjoyed In Five Years, so I bought a copy of this one so I could finish it. I thoroughly enjoy for Serle writes it is very easy to get lost in her writing. This book would make for a great beach read if it weren’t so sad.

Once again, Rebecca Serle has a gift for weaving magical realism effortlessly into a story. I loved so many things about this book. Positano and Italy in general are among my fave places on earth so I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the setting, food, and locations. I could visualize exactly where the characters were, how the food tasted, the smell of the ocean, everything. I do think this made me enjoy the book even more. I had to restrain myself from immediately booking a trip back to Positano.

The story itself was beautiful but also filled with heartbreak and grief. I couldn’t help but think of my close friends who’ve experienced the loss of a parent and how they might experience this story differently, more emotionally. But I could also see this being very therapeutic for someone going through the grief of loss of a loved one.

I really enjoyed this book and the growth of the main character.

Sigh… I am sad to report that One Italian Summer was just not for me.

Serle’s writing is beautifully descriptive enough to transport the reader to the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Positano. This was my favourite part of the book - a European vacation in my mind (closest I’m going to get to finding my way back to the lemon-scented magic of Positano for the foreseeable future).

Sadly, the storyline and characters just didn’t do it for me. The main character was unlikeable, unsympathetic and too self-absorbed. Also, while I appreciate that some may relate to the obsessive love of this daughter for her mother, to me it felt suffocating. I love and adore my mother, but she is not my whole world nor would she ever want to be. Perhaps this is a personal thing and others have grown up differently???

I will continue to check out whatever Serle writes in the future because I enjoy her writing and adored the unexpected way In Five Years wrapped me up and surprised me. Unfortunately this follow up didn’t live up to my expectations.

2.5 Stars, Rounded Up

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of the book in exchange for my fair and honest review.

I thought this book was super cute. Having lost a parent at a young age, I definitely related to the character of Katy and her wish to complete their trip together. Having her see her dead mother on her trip and being part of her past really resonated with me. I will definitely continue to read this author's books as they just keep getting better and better!

Contrary to how it might appear, I do not enjoy rating books so low. I do not enjoy coming across a story that I had been hopeful to savour. Yet, here we are again wherein I have had to stop reading because I was so utterly devoid of emotion towards the entire cast of characters & the plot that I felt no inclination to pursue finishing the book.

When Katy's mother, Carol, passes away she is understandably riddled with grief & the reader meets Katy as she attempts to understand how she is meant to go on without her mother. Had Serle stopped there we could have had a wonderful story about the exploration of grief in adults who learn to maneuver the world without their parents. Unfortunately, what we read about instead is Katy claiming that her mother was the love of her life & that she was Carol's as well. Here we find ourselves at my main reason for not finishing the book.

When I have to pause in my reading to question why I am so annoyed I pose myself an honest question: am I annoyed at this character because their actions differ from those I would take or, am I annoyed because their decision making process lacks logical sense?

In the case of this book it was the latter. Katy maroons endlessly about her love for her mother being the ultimate & only love that mattered, ever. I could not relate to that nor would my own mother want me to be able to. I admit that this is where expressing my feelings becomes a bit tricky. I am not trying to say that sharing a strong love with ones parents is wrong or bizarre. However, I was not raised that way. My own mother would not want for the love of my life to have been her, nor would my grandmother have wanted it to be for her daughter, so on & so forth.

I could not understand how a thirty (30) year old adult lacked any sensical abilities to work through life. Katy goes on about not being certain she wants to stay married to Eric because they never had any tangible obstacles to overcome. This is ridiculous. Obstacles, struggles & heartaches are not something you will upon your relationship. Such behaviours left me feeling as though Katy wanted to be able to say that she 'fought' for something in her life whereas we knew she never held enough gumption for that.

Plot annoyances aside, I did not appreciate the writing style either. I found myself wondering whether or not an editor had read through the final work. For example, Katy says she is going to get a dress - she puts on the white frill dress. Another example, the waiters all wear white shirts - a man in a white shirt comes forward. These are not inherently bad sentences but they could have been worked to flow with more ease. The approaching waiter could be described as wearing a white shirt, rather than have all the wait staff attire reported to then restate those same details moments later. It left me feeling as though there was a word count.

All in all, I did not enjoy this book. I could not relate to Katy; I could not find it in myself to empathize with a person who felt that neither Eric nor her father were allowed to feel sad at Carol's passing because she herself, was her mother's true love so, no one else's emotions mattered. It was difficult to root for someone who was severely out of touch with reality.

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster Canada & Rebecca Serle for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

#OneItalianSummer #Netgalley

Happy Publication Week to One Italian Summer!

Some things that might come in handy when you pick up One Italian Summer to read: a box of Kleenex if you are a crier like me; an uninterrupted chunk of time because you will not want to put this book down & most likely your passport because you will be seduced into mentally planning your Amalfi coast trip as you are reading this!

The pain of losing her mom sends Katy down a dark spiral of grief and loss. Katy was extremely attached to her mom Carol and with her gone, Katy is unsure how to carry on. She doubts everything in her life, including the future of her marriage. Prior to her mom passing, the two women were planning a trip to Positano, as Carol often spoke of the time she spent there in her youth. Katy decides to take the trip by herself, hoping to find a way to stay connected to her mom and maybe discover things about her through discovering this place she loved. While immersing herself in sights, smells & tastes of the Amalfi Coast, Katy's trip takes an unexpected turn.

My work brings with it excruciatingly high level of grief and loss. As I was reading about Katy's journey I was processing my own very fresh grief. Though I am very close with both of my parents I couldn't exactly relate to the way Katy's mom was at the center of her existence but that aspect still did not take away from my empathy towards Katy and the pain she was experiencing. This book also had a great amount of moments of joy and beauty and all the descriptions of delicious food and beautiful places Katy was visiting made me want to pack my bag and head to Positano right away. There was also a slight element of supernatural/unusual which I thoroughly enjoyed in the story.

This was such a beautiful, deeply emotional reading experience for me. I loved Rebecca Serle's writing style and her imagination and will definitely going to be reading her previous (and future) work.

My gratitude goes to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is my second book by Rebecca Serle. I enjoy her style of writing – it is easy to slip into the reality she creates for her characters – which is saying something because her stories are filled with magical realism.

After sitting Shiva for her mom, Katy Silver tells her husband she doesn’t know if she can be married to him anymore and decides to go on the bucket list vacation she and her mom had planned to take together in Positano, Italy.
Aside from stunning vistas and incredible food, Katy also finds her mom alive and well in Italy – but her mom is 30 years old and doesn’t recognize Katy as her daughter.

If you can suspend belief and immerse yourself in this story you will likely feel transported to Italy or wish you could hop on the next plane to get there (I wish I could!).

This is a charming and heartfelt story about the bond between mothers and daughters and how to grieve and continue to live your life without the person you cannot imagine living without.