One Italian Summer

Welcome to the second episode of 2026! If you read Scythe, the January pick, I bet it was a good start to your year. But our TBR awaits and we gotta keep going so let’s talk about our unconventional love story novel.

One Italian Summer was written by Rebecca Serle in 2022 and it doesn’t seem like it has accumulated any awards. The author herself is a New Work Times Bestseller for her book In Five Years. Now at this point, this recognition means nothing to me anymore. Everyone with half decent writing skills has made the list for a novel. And I think the award is given too freely to authors that don’t embody the true meaning of literature…but enough about this, let’s get into the summary and the review.

The story follows Katy, a 30-year old woman who’s mother died. They were supposed to go on a trip together to the Amalfi Coast and Katy decides to go away in an attempt to find herself again after the death of her mother. As she roams around the Italian coast line, she sees Carol, her mother. How is this possible?

The initial reason I picked up this novel was because of how promising the love story sounded. The centre of the plot did not revolve around a romantic relationship as one might think. It’s the love a mother and a daughter share. However, as I was progressing through the story, I found their love very intense instead of unconditional. There’s nothing creepy going on, rest assured, but Katy’s descriptions of how she feels about her mother’s death is like a drug addict in withdrawal. Now, of course, you might be familiar with these intense emotions, illustrated very famously by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet and other artists. But this is not a romantic relationship. Of course, Katy can grieve her mother but my god, it sounded as if she lost her soul. Through the story, Katy also emphasizes how her love for her mother trumps over her husband. She questions if their love is even real. This is not an instant red flag, but I feel like Katy would be talking like this about any man that would have been her husband. It is not directed at Eric as a person but rather at the person that is her husband, whoever that is. And that’s kinda sad. Like her only true loving relationship was with her mother. That’s too much co-dependency to me. Speaking of husbands and intense love, I do not like how the author blended the line of romantic cheating. I don’t want to give away too much so all I’ll say is that Katy got away with a lot because she was grieving. She got too much leniency in her romantic situations and she doesn’t really take as much accountability as I would have liked to see from her.

The setting lifted up my mood a bit. I mean, who wouldn’t want to sit on the beach on the Amalfi coast and explore all the exquisite culinary wonders the area has to offer?

Ok, so this is pretty much it for the non-spoiler part of the review. A last note I will add is that this novel is contemporary fiction. This means it is not heavy on action and focuses more on the character dynamics. Do with that what you will.

However, as I was progressing through the story, I found their love very intense instead of unconditional.

If you hate spoilers, this is your time to stop. My advice is, concentrate on the other items on your TBR before you consider One Italian Summer. Thank you for sticking around this month, hope you gained some insight and I’ll see you next time!

Now if you’re still here, it’s cause you want to find out one last element that bugged me and as you know, it’s a spoiler so proceed at your own risk as they say. Here’s the context: Katy goes to Positano after her mother’s death and while in the city, she stumbles over her mother. That obviously doesn’t make sense and we can infer that Rebecca Serle is using some form of time manipulation/magical realism. This means Katy went back in time to when her mother first visited Positano before she met Katy’s father. The problem I have with this is the execution. First, how did Katy not notice how young her mother is? Katy is an adult in her early or mid 30s, so safe to say Carol is at least 50-60 years old when she died and 20-30 when Katy meets her in Italy. Did alarm bells not go off in her mind? I think it also spoiled the fun for readers to guess how Carol was able to “come back from the grave”. As soon as we see her as young women, we can only assume Katy is hallucinating her mother or it’s magic. I think it would have been more fun to entertain the idea of a twin sister or something like that. Second, Katy is not rich. So how did she not notice the abnormally low prices? The Amalfi Coast is becoming very touristy. According to a Vancouver Sun article on tourism in the Amalfi Coast, the reporter explains that the founder of a tour operator has said hotel prices have gone up 40% since before COVID. Now of course, it’s kinda hard to pinpoint when Katy was actually there, but inflation in Italy has more than doubled from 2021 to 2022 to reach an all time peak in early 2023 according to a Financial Post article on the accelerated inflation the country is experiencing. Ok maybe you might say I’m getting to technical and making loose assumptions. But you can’t deny that prices will have risen in the span of 30 years, especially in a tourist zone. How did Katy not see how cheap it had suddenly become?

Anyway, maybe you’re the kind of reader that will overlook these flaws and admire the passionate mother-daughter love between Katy and Carol. I know I’ve been negative in this review so I will admit that Carol is a great character. She’s got depth and she really acts as a mother towards Katy. Katy is the one I have a problem with because it feels like she has an undying intense love for her mother than seems to extend beyond the normal mother-daughter relationships we see in everyday life.

So I will leave you to ponder on this unexpected love story and maybe even your own! Happy upcoming Valentine’s Day, wishing you all the best in your romantic endeavours, and don’t forget to keep exploring those pages!