Reviews

This book was sunshine and joy. Tears and laughter. A story about friendship, and love, and Italy, and art. And above all, about family - the glue that holds everything else together!

benno2304's review against another edition

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5.0

Like Italy itself, this novel is bright. It shattered my heart with every line yet I was smiling the whole time.

I don’t even know where to start with this book. It was truly so gorgeous. Every single one of the characters so real and heartwarming. The writing has a real dreamy sort of quality that took me a while to figure out but it almost feels like the whole book is written like an epilogue or a fond reminiscence. It kind of reminded me of the house on the cerulean sea in the very found family, unconventional group of people all living/working together. Cress is so sweet. Genuinely was looking up how much it costs to live in Florence while reading this because it sounded so ideal. It’s not quite what I expected based on the blurb, and to be honest the last chapter that was just Evelyn’s story (which was far more in line with what I assumed the story would be like) was the part that I struggled to get through the most. It took me maybe two weeks or more just to get through that last bit, for whatever reason I just wasn’t that invested - and despite that it’s still a five star which is really saying something. I read it over the Easter weekend and at the time really thought it was too nice to be reading just as a camping book. The passages and the story and the characters were so beautiful I felt like I really needed to pay attention and re read parts but in a good way. Just honestly a very nice book with real characters and I don’t even know what else to say to try and convey how beautiful and dreamy this read was