One Italian Summer

A ghosty book set on the sun-drenched Amalfi coast? Sign me up.

This book sparkled with mystery, intrigue, and an enchanting bit of magic. The mother-daughter relationship felt real and affecting, and by the end, I was nostalgic for a life I had never lived.

I took a bit of a side trip away from romance in selecting, One Italian Summer, though love threads through this story.

The bond between mother and daughter can never be truly severed. From that premise, One Italian Summer throws open the door for a reader to experience a time slip where it's possible to reconnect with someone who has passed.

The author adds a magical twist and manipulates time to where the character, Katy, meets her deceased mom, then a younger woman in Italy. The author gifts the reader with a beautifully told, heartfelt story. 

I’ve never read a book that so perfectly captured the taste of travel until I read One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle.

The food passages alone can pick you up and plop you down at a pasta restaurant of your dreams, but it’s the sense of reflection that only can come with travel that makes One Italian Summer shine.

Serle’s prose sparkles with her signature touch of magic in this novel about a woman traveling to Italy in the aftermath of her mother’s death. A story of self-discovery, grief, hope, and love, this book made me want to hang up… show more.

Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer is a heavy dose of romance with a twist of magical realism. Set in Positano, it is another story of a woman who escapes to Italy to heal from a death—this time of her beloved mother. Before Carol’s illness, mother and daughter had planned a trip to Positano on the Amalfi Coast; after Carol’s death, Katy Silver decides to go alone, searching for the Italy that her mother experienced more than thirty years ago. This was an afternoon’s read, a literary side trip to Positano with an unexpected (but strangely satisfying) O’Henry ending.

Katy’s mother was her best friend, and after her mother dies, Katy decides to embark solo on the mother/daughter trip they’d planned to the Amalfi Coast in Italy before her passing. Once there, not only can Katy feel her mother’s spirit but she actually encounters her mother as a young woman. I absolutely loved this story and embraced the magic of Katy befriending and getting to know her mother as a younger woman and coming to a greater understanding of who she was. Having lost my father and writing my book as a way of transmuting my grief, I felt… show more.