A review by v_____
One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle

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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