Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance
This book follows a teenage girl named Lina, as she fulfills her mother's dying wish of traveling to Tuscany to meet her father. Lina is given the journal that her mother kept when she lived in Italy, and uses it as a guidebook to explore the city and uncover secrets in her mother's life.
This was a recommendation from Lauren, and I thought it was a cute and quick read. It reminded me a bit of Anna and the French Kiss.
I think that if I focused solely on the travel aspect of this book, it would have five stars. While reading this, I was able to picture places that I had been to when I went to Florence, and it was nice to be able to relive that to some extent. I also enjoyed the different stories about the city and thought that was an interesting tie-in. Reading this made me want to go back to Florence!
I have to say that there were some things that annoyed me about this book, which is why I wouldn’t give it five stars. I realize that Lina did not read her mother’s journal all in one sitting in order to draw out the suspense and mystery of the story. However, it seemed really weird that she would read two entries and go, “I have so many questions! How will I ever find the answers to these questions?! I better do some bizarre detective work instead of reading the next entry, which provides me with the answer to said questions.”
I also hated the overuse of the word like to make the character sound younger, and the strange metaphors. Also, the love story was not really my cup of tea. It felt a bit flat and forced. Aside from those issues, I did enjoy this book and found that it was a happy summer read that I decided to pick up in January.
Official Rating:
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- Was the book interesting? Yes (1)
- Was it easy to finish (even if I didn’t like it)? Yes (1)
- Was it emotionally engaging? Kind of (0)
- Was it memorable? Yes (1)
- Would I read it again? I might just for the description of Florence (0)
