One Italian Summer

Genre: Contemporary / Chick-Lit / Fantasy / Romance

Book Type: Audio

Author: Rebecca Serle

Narrator: Lauren Graham

Pages / Length: 272 pages / 6 hours and 21 minutes

Publisher: Atria Books (March 1, 2022) / Simon & Schuster Audio

Book Description:

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.

Thoughts: I struggled with this one because I couldn't relate to the strong feeling of dependence between the mother and daughter. I have one of the best relationships with my mom, as well as my daughter, but was raised with independence and am doing the same with my daughter. That aside, I did enjoy the story of who Carol was before having Katy. I think oftentimes, speaking as a mom, we forget who we were and aspired to be before becoming a mom, and this was a nice reminder to not lose sight of that while we still have the time. This was a nice read, but left me wanting more and oftentimes frustrated.

Favorite Quotes:

🌅 I knew this meant something to her - to go, to show me who she was before I came along - and I felt a fierce pull of love for her, for all the women she had been before me, all the women I never got to know.

🌅 "You act like you don't know how you got here, like you just woke up and looked around and thought, Huh - but I have news for you. Even inaction is a choice."

🌅 What if I got it all wrong? What if the point of marriage wasn't to belong but instead to feel transported? What if we never got to where we were trying to go because we were so comfortable where we were?

🌅 "That the same set of circumstances, beliefs, actions that got you to a moment won't gt you to what comes next. That if you want a different outcome, you have to behave differently. That you have to keep evolving."

🌅 ... I realize how much of her life I was always missing. She knew me completely, but it didn't work both ways; it couldn't. Look how much life was lived before I ever arrived. Look at who she was before she met me.

🌅 "I felt like I lost... like I didn't know who I was anymore. It's like my old life was gone. I was gone. I used to be the woman you knew before you found that photo, and I'm her, it's just that no one sees that anymore. Maybe I don't see it anymore. I just wanted to recapture a little bit of that. A little bit of who I was, or who I thought I'd be."

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️