thebi_brarian's reviews
97 reviews

This book should have been everything I loved -mystery maps, the NYC library, a light myster  but it was so boring.

Also Nell is not a cartographer, her dad was not a cartographer even if he had once aspired to be. Map Librarians perhaps, archivists, curators, restorationers(ists?) but not cartographers.

Also can someone please explain to me why the Dreamers Atlas was supposed to change the world of cartography? It just sounded like an interesting coffee table book to me.

This book put me into a week long reading slump. 

Right at the start, I was fairly certain I wasn't going to like One Italian Summer at all. The main character, Katie, has just lost her mother, Carole, and is devastated; in her grief she refers to Carole as 'the love of her life'. As I do not have much of a relationship with my own mother at all, this sentiment and Katie's next steps as the result of her grief were so foreign to me that I was immediately put off. It didn't feel to me like a particularly genuine reaction and left me feeling frustated that Katie would behave so childishly.

But I appreciate that this a me problem; it is certainly not the author's fault that I couldn't imagine feeling the loss of my own mother quite that deeply.

However, just at the point of considering whether I might DNF, the story took an unexpected path that compelled me to listen all the way to the end.

(I was intrigued by Katie meeting the younger version of Carole; was this time travel, an alternate universe or all in our protagonist's mind?)

I wouldn't say I was rewarded for my time; whilst I appreciated the accessible writing style and the rich descriptions of the Italian summer, the rest fell flat for me.

Its not that I didn't like the novel, just that it ended up being a very average story, despite the unexpected path that it initially took. The pacing was a little off with the ending feeling rushed, in particular a certain revelation made by Katie

(that her mother had come to Italy after she was born, effectively running from her responsibilities, rather than before).

that was over and done with in a flash.

Whilst I am not necessarily always a fan of a bleak and challenging plot, One Italian Summer felt almost too saccarine sweet. We spent three quarters of the plot in a kind of whining grief, wherein we learn that Katie is apparently nothing without her mother only to speed towards the third act conflict, resolve that in the blink of an eye and come to a storybook ending with a protagonist who seems instantly over the loss of a mother she had previously described as her one true love.

I didn't hate this, but I didn't much care for it either.