REVIEW: One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle

REVIEW:

In Five Years was a gut punch of a read and I hoped (?) suspected (?) that One Italian Summer would also serve up some serious emotional damage, especially after reading the synopsis. And yes, there were definitely some highs and lows, but for me it felt more like an exploration and a chance for discovery that Italy offered Katy. She was so lost and flailing that having this completely magical opportunity to learn a little more about her mother and herself gave her a view of things that staying stateside would have never given her. 

While One Italian Summer wasn't exactly what I anticipated, I really liked what it offered. Not only did I get to read about a deep and abiding love between a mother and a daughter, which isn't something I come across very often, but I also got to ponder the big questions Katy worked through while doing it all in the most divine location (one I'm hoping to see soon).

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SYNOPSIS:

The New York Times bestselling author of the “heartwarming, heartbreaking, and hard to put down” (Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author) modern classic In Five Years returns with a moving and unforgettable exploration of the powerful bond between mother and daughter set on the breathtaking Amalfi Coast.

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.

But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.

And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue.

Rebecca Serle’s next great love story is here, and this time it’s between a mother and a daughter. With her signature “heartbreaking, redemptive, and authentic” (Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author) prose, Serle has crafted a transcendent novel about how we move on after loss, and how the people we love never truly leave us.

REVIEW: In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

OUR REVIEW:

This novel got wayyyyy under my skin. It was one of those rare reads that when you finish it you find yourself sitting very still, quietly staring off into space as you try to absorb everything you just read. It's the type of novel that makes you dive into the writer's backlist and when you investigate and there aren't yet 20 kajillion books to read you're disappointed because all you want is more of that reader's high that you had when you put down In Five Years. It's a novel that you feel like you saw "it" coming and even if you did, you weren't quite prepared for how the emotions of it all completely mowed you down. It's a novel that has a really maddening main character --one you find kinda annoying and kinda endearing all at the same time (you hate that you get her, but you totally get her and hope to somehow avoid some of the pitfalls she fell into). It's a novel that may make you snotty cry or maybe just get that one single tear--but the relief of that release and the ending of the novel all just work.

It's a novel that hangs over you a full day after you've read it, keeping you a fog--head full of everything and nothing. It's a novel that I'll definitely put on my shelf ...a novel that I'm already talking up to anyone I think will listen.

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SYNOPSIS: 

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers.

She is nothing like her lifelong best friend—the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.

But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight—but it is one hour she cannot shake. In Five Years is an unforgettable love story, but it is not the one you’re expecting.