I hope everyone had a Happy Easter. I skipped out on posting yesterday because it was a holiday. Sidenote: I never realised that not everyone had a holiday on Easter Monday until my friend who is currently doing her Masters in Peru told me that she had to go to class – is this normal? We’ve always had Easter Monday off. Anyway, my Easter was quiet and spent at home with the parents for the entire weekend. Now back to the regularly scheduled program and one of my favourite topics … BOOKS.
April Lindner
Per Goodreads
While backpacking through Florence, Italy, during the summer before she heads off to college, Lucy Sommersworth finds herself falling in love with the culture, the architecture, the food … and Jesse Palladino, a handsome street musician. After a world wind romance, Lucy returns home, determined to move on from her “vacation flirtation”. But just because summer is over doesn’t mean Lucy and Jesse are over, too.
In this coming-of-age romance, April Lindner perfectly captures the highs and lows of a summer love that might just be meant to last beyond the season.
3.5 stars
This was a good read. Not a great read. Would I recommend it, yes if you have time and want an easy read, but I wouldn’t necessarily put this on the top of your must-read list.
As a wander-luster I loved that the book took the reader to one of the places on my list to visit – Italy, and engulfed you in Italian culture and places. I love books that transport you to foreign places. In fact, if i was to name one great thing about this book it would be the descriptions of the places that Lucy visits. The countryside of Italy, the streets, Rome … all superbly detailed in the book and in fact made me want to book an Italian vacation stat! It was just like when I read Eat Pray Love and fell in love with the destinations … more than the actual book. I wanted more of Italy after reading of these travels. The author did a good job here.
I also quite liked Lucy as a character and her relationship with her parents and friends. They weren’t always the easiest relationships – her parents had quite different dreams and goals for her and didn’t support her theatre career ambitions, and on top of that her travel companion Charlene was an odd, negative nancy – but I actually liked how the author dealt with these complex relationships, particularly Lucy’s relationship with her father, and how it all worked out. So far so good right?
Well … the problem for me with this book was that the story is quite obviously a love story between Lucy and her summer Italian love Jesse and I just never got invested in the relationship. Without too much detail I would just say, it was so typical. She met Jesse in Italy, she spent all her time with Jesse, she fell in love Jesse, she had to go back to the States, there was forced communication, they reunite. I just never felt the compulsive pull I should have when she moved back to the States. What was meant to be the focal point of the story was just to me lacklustre and a bit disappointing. I would go as far as to say that I felt that the relationship was a little toxic and overdone and I wanted to tell both her and Jesse that the ocean if full of fishes … Swim on. The relationship with her parents and the scenery of Italy was much more interesting.
This was probably the worst review ever because I think I came across pretty strong on the dislike portion. Just to be clear – it was not by any means a bad book. It was nice, not great, but nice. It was also an easy read and you can’t complain about that.
