Monica’s Musings: One Italian Summer

One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle

“I cannot yet conceive of a world without her, what that will look like, who I am in her absence.”
― Rebecca Serle, One Italian Summer

Summary: 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: two weeks in Positano, the magical town 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 cliff sides, 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.

My thoughts: Katy strikes me as a little too codependent and a bit too invested in her mother’s life choices, however, the pain of her loss resonated with me. Katy chooses to still go on the mother-daughter vacation she had planned, leaving her husband Eric at home. She plans to use this time to rediscover her life without her mother around.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It did remind me of Serle’s first novel, In Five Years. The magical time-jumping aspects of her books are fun, and I find that I enjoy them because they are more fictional than most of my reads.

I really liked the concept of Katy meeting and spending time with Carol as a 30 year old. I’ve thought so many times, “what I would do to be a fly on the wall in the past lives of my parents”, just to know and see what they were like before I came along. It’s one thing to see pictures and hear stories, but it would be another thing entirely to experience it. That aspect of this novel was fascinating.

Where I falter on this one is the romance aspect. *A few spoilers in the paragraph directly below*

I would have enjoyed this book so much more if one of two scenarios occurred: 1) There was Eric and no Adam or 2) There was Adam and no Eric. I really, really didn’t enjoy the affair aspect of this book. It made Katy less likable. And while I did like the closure of the ending, it did make her come across as very fickle and a bit irritating with regards to how she treated Eric without him ever knowing. They didn’t really communicate through anything, she just sort of figures it out spontaneously and he gets the outcome of not getting divorced. I wouldn’t have minded Katy meeting Adam and everything about their relationship unfolding… if a perfectly nice, considerate husband wasn’t sitting at home without a clue.