Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer takes place in an idyllic Amalfi coastal town. Like Serle’s previous work, In Five Years, there’s a bit of time travel to make the plot work.

When her mother dies, Katy goes alone on the journey that they’d planned to take together.  A side benefit of the trip overseas is that we get to enjoy the sensory-rich atmosphere – the sunshine, fragrant flowers and delicious food – not to mention the warm cadence of the Italian language. You can read it on the level of wish-fulfilling armchair travel or for the story of a mother-daughter relationship.

Katy and Carol were incredibly close – so close that others had a hard time breaking in. Katy’s husband, Eric, was excluded in many ways before Carol’s death, and, afterwards, Katy actually leaves him. In this book, the main focus is how Katy gets to know her mother, Carol, when Carol was a young woman

I enjoyed this book most for the setting – which Serle does a masterful job of evoking. The storyline about the somewhat strained loops in the space-time continuum were sometimes confusing. However, if you’re looking for a fun summer read that has a hint of literary weight, this would check a lot of the boxes.