Reviews tagging 'Death'

One Italian Summer: A Novel by Rebecca Serle, Rebecca Serle

49 reviews

_verena_'s review against another edition

emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

I've never smoked, but it's the last day of my mothers shiva, so here we are...

- One Italian Summer, 00:00:01

🎧 listened to the audiobook


Short Review:
This was such a mess!
It's just too much!
Too overloaded!


More detailed Review:
I really, really, really, REALLY wanted to like this.
And I did! Right until Katy met Carol in Italy and everything went down the drain. But let's start from the beginning.

I was SO glad about Lauren Graham narrating this. Why you might ask? - Just because, obviously, she is Lauren Graham!
Plus: this book is giving major Gilmore Girls vibes from the start, with a quote from Lorelai in the epigraph and then mentioning Gilmore Girls right at the beginning.

However it is a devastating, heart shattering version of it, and I could hardly deal 😭😭😭
Didn't expect this book to be so sad, but at least it helped me realize that my heart is not made of stone and I can still be touched by books (which I suspected I couldn't be after dnfing The Pairing).
However, I was curious about the 'fantasy' part, which didn't sound especially appealing to me, but I liked the overall premise of a woman grieving and her life totally being derailed by the loss of her parent. So it might make some sense, to throw some delusion in there. I think loss and grief are some of the more taboo topics in mainstream literature, which was why I was happy to find it in a book, that seemed to be lightening up the whole thing with its location being Amalfi Coast.

BUT!
There were just tooooooooo many things cramped in there.
Why did there have to be so many additional storylines, which were so poorly executed?
Like:
The whole storyline about the hotel. Nobody cares!

Katy just arrived 1 day ago, and suddenly she is somehow all informed about all of this, because the staff tells her all the details? It's like the whole town knows about the offer for the hotel. I mean, if my mother just had died, I wouldn't care one second about a random hotel being sold, it makes no sense at all!

Katy.
I did like her at the beginning. I liked how lovingly she thought about her mother, her family, how terrible the loss is. But at some point this just got old. We are in her thoughts all the time and of course, when grieving a human does repeat things a lot, to get over it, but still, I feel like Katy didn't get important parts, that were happening around her quite right. If she had though, I think that could have opened up a lot more of interesting thoughts. Example:

When Carol explains to her, that she left her as a baby, because everything was too much, that could have opened up a whole thoughtprovoking sphere about how women are left alone with childcare, housework, mental load etc. Instead this just didn't happen, and Katy just accepted this superficial explanation...

Adam.
Everything about Adam!

Besides being totally uninteresting and having no charm at all, or anything appealing whatsoever, he was just a huge prick. He knows how awful Katy is doing mentally, and yes, he tells her "we don't have to do this blabla", but if he was actually a good guy, he would back off. I mean what kind of person wants to start a 'relationship' (I don't think you could even call it that) with somebody that is not well so QUICKLY - Give that woman time! Unless of course they only want to get in their pants, so here we are, with a MMC that is displaying borderline predatory behavior by telling a women "we don't have to", who is barely keeping it together and therefore not really able to consent in the first place...

Katy + Adam.

In light of what I wrote above, this seems to be a tiny issue, but let's do it: I'm not sure, if she cheated on Eric, I'm leaning towards NO. Technically they are still married. They are however separated. She left him and told him, she is not sure if she wants to be with him anymore.
Plus, she cheated on him around 30ish years ago, when she was traveling through time. She didn't know, she was in a different time and she knew she was still married, but separated. (THIS is why this book is such a mess to me btw.) So NO.
I really have no idea, why people write enraged reviews on her, because this book is "cheating apologetic" or something? These people are separated.
The more interesting question to me is, if she ever told him about any of this (the time traveling and the cheating).

Eric.
#justiceforEric.

In my opinion he was painted so much as a 'bad guy', which he clearly isn't. Let's not forget, that he is grieving too! And I do understand, that after a traumatic event like that, Katy is questioning her life decisions, which include being with Eric, but that doesn't mean he a the villain...

the fantasy element.

aka Katy has somehow fallen through time and everybody who she dealt with actually lived in the past. I'm generally always sceptical, when it comes to time traveling, because most of the time it's badly executed (except maybe in One Last Stop).
Here is extraordinarily bad... She asks what year it is, and that's it.
How did she never notice, that people don't have any smartphones, only old cars are on the street, or any other technical inventions that have happened in the last 30 years? Did she simply not notice? Or worse, think, that this is Italy nowadays? If it's that, she really is the prototype of ignorant-classist-American-traveling-the-world.
Also she tells everybody to invest into Apple and Starbucks... omfg, this is just so stupid!

Conclusion:
Started out strong, became decreasingly weak to end in a complete and annoying mess...

As they say: Sometimes less is more.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Terminal illness, Grief, and Death of parent

strawb3rrysugar's review against another edition

emotional reflective relaxing slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

If you like a comfy summer beach read that details delicious meals in a beautiful location, and you can get past the kind of monotonous character work and the main character's immaturity that borders on astounding at points, you'll like this book. The rush job the ending does plummeted this book from 4 stars to three for me. And if you're hoping for an explanation of how the book's time-travel mechanic works, you won't get one, unless Grief Vibes count.

I understand why the MC is the way she is, to an extent (though it borders on emotional incest very often) - she's intentionally built up an image of her mother in her head and has a hard time looking at the world without Mom-tinted glasses. But her exploration of this dynamic and the characters' development is incredibly surface level, and it feels like you're admiring a Pinterest board more than a person who haunts the narrative. Not an atrocious read, just kind of meh. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Death of parent

Moderate: Infidelity and Sexual content

Minor: Abandonment

There's two pretty brief sex scenes near the end of the book - descriptive, but not graphic. The central plot of the story has to do with the death of Katy's mother. A large subplot has to do with an affair Katy has with a man named Adam, but it's explained away by this weird time-travel mechanic.

Katy finds out that her mother left her and her father when she was a baby, and gets pretty upset about it.

theinstabookworm's review against another edition

emotional lighthearted reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Was the MC's relationship with her mother questionable at BEST? Yes. 

But, I also think that some of the story does portray grief accurately. Especially when a loved one dies young. 

However, Serle took it too far when this story could have been an exploration of grief in adults who learn to navigate through the world without their parents. 

Lauren Graham narrates the audiobook, and, as a big Gilmore Girls fan, I loved that. I also didn't see the twist coming.

But does Katy need therapy, both grief counseling and other? Yes, yes she does.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Grief, and Death of parent

ryleecanread's review against another edition

This FMC sucked. She had the weirdest relationship with her mother, was horrible to her husband, cheated, didn’t allow anyone but her to grieve, got involved in weird things with the hotel, and was just generally a weird and shitty person. I don’t care how this ended 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cancer, Death, Infidelity, and Death of parent

mattiedancer's review against another edition

hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Writing: 3.75⭐️/5 

Rebecca Serle writes almost hard and clear about what hurts. Something in her writing felt a bit distant to me when talking about very intimate emotions, but overall the writing of the novel did not take away from the reading experience, and in fact, felt relatively focused and pointed. I do wish Serle had pushed the writing a bit further, doing a bit more showing rather than telling at the heart of the hardest moments.

Characters: 3⭐️/5

Alright, so at certain intervals all the characters feel real. At other times, they didn’t quite fit. Both Katy’s mom and Katy felt real for the most part. However, the hotel’s staff very much slipped into the novel to be very convenient plot devices. In a similar vein, Katy herself – while a well-developed character – read as extremely juvenile at times. Her obsession with keeping her mom to herself was odd, and her anger at finding out her mother left her as a child (which results in her sleeping with someone who is not her husband almost out of revenge), felt very petulant and small. I understand everyone processes grief differently, but I had a hard time buying into a 30-year-old woman thinking about her mother as “hers” in a very toddler-like way.

Plot: 3⭐️/5 

The overarching plot felt interesting, but the details really didn’t feel right. I understand, on a deep level, needing to run away in order to heal from loss and manage grief. However, the way the character then acted as she ran into her mother and started to fall for a stranger in her hotel felt a bit disjointed. In regards to the magical realism, it's also implied that she really did travel back in time, which means she cheated on her husband and decided to never reveal that to him, which, all in all, felt very immature and shitty. Another hold-up I had was the sheer number of details that were so unnecessary. It felt a bit travel journal-ly in the way that Serle chose to recount nearly every meal our MC ate. While I appreciate that as an appeal to travelling to Italy, it felt incongruent with the purpose and theme of the novel.

Who Should Read This Book? 

• Those looking for a “lighter” read about death and grief
• Those looking for a bit of summer escapism into Italy with some serious topics

Content Warnings? 

Death of parent, grief, death, abandonment, infidelity, sexual content, gaslighting, medical content, terminal illness, chronic illness, cancer

Post-Reading Rating:  2.75⭐️/5

Oh. I guess?

Final Rating: 3⭐️/5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Infidelity, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Abandonment

deeofbkb's review against another edition

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

Plot holes.  No explanation of time travel.  The hotel couldn’t find her?  Said the rooms were messed up? The hotel owner doesn’t remember the investment conversation she had with Katy? Lots of eating but no one ever pays for anything. The itinerary was important and then all of a sudden exit was never mentioned again. She mentions websites after she found out what year it was; websites weren’t known as widely in 1992.  Unnatural fascination with her mother and she has no other friends? Katy was so selfish thinking she was grieving more than anyone else and got mad when other people grieved? Adam wasn’t needed to love this story along.
I really wanted to give it 2 stars for the descriptions of Italy, but I don’t feel I’d be honoring myself in doing that for a couple of paragraphs.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

valeria_balzan's review against another edition

emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I cann t complain about this book because if I got to meet my mother, in the prime of her youth I too would relish it and don't know how to act lol

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Death, Terminal illness, Grief, and Death of parent

tsodeur's review against another edition

emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cancer and Death of parent

Minor: Death, Mental illness, Self harm, Grief, and Abandonment

cblevz's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

If you personally connect to grieving the loss of a mother/feminine figure in your life, this book will connect a lot more with you than if not. The small “boring” or “slow” moments will feel more important. A very subjective read. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Chronic illness, Death, and Death of parent

marieeveparentroy's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, and Alcohol

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Blood