You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
mishale1 's review for:
Sally Brady's Italian Adventure
by Christina Lynch
adventurous
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Sally Brady starts off at a very low point in this book. She isn’t even Sally Brady yet. Her parents have out her on a train and sent her away. They can’t afford her. She’s a little girl and she’s trying to decide whether to take a delicious apple she’s hungry for or flowers she thinks she can sell.
Amazingly, she meets an actress while attempting to sell her flowers. The actress, Patsy, falls for Sally immediately and takes her home to adopt her.
This is where we start with Sally. She spends a few years in the lap of luxury. She’s not hungry, she has a comfortable room to herself and life is good.
Then Sally’s adoptive parents split up and Patsy gets creative in her attempts to support the two of them. She, at first, becomes a writer calling herself Bon Vivant. But it soon becomes clear that Patsy can’t handle the job and she fancies Sally’s wardrobe and appearance up and turns her into the Bon Vivant.
Sally spends a few years rubbing elbows with the highest tiers of their society. She meets royalty and movie stars. And she secretly writes gossip about them and their parties.
But Fascism is rising in popularity and things are about to change again.
Sally and Patsy seem to get split up around this time. This part confused me. I know Sally is in her late teens or early twenties by this point but it felt like Patsy disappeared (maybe I missed the author saying where she was-there were a ton of little details and I definitely could have overlooked this one).
Now Sally, formerly an American, now living in Italy becomes a prisoner of war.
In this part of the book, Sally goes through her hardest times. But she always, always tried to make the best of everything. The author mentions at the end in her author’s note that some people took this attitude when trying to live through those years, they got through the bad stuff by still trying to find and enjoy the good stuff.
But it’s just so hard to believe someone could be as optimistic as Sally during everything that was going on. Was she being overly positive? Was she unaware of how bad things were? I don’t think she was. I think she just really truly found a way to be an optimist in the middle of it all.
It’s funny, when the book switched to the wartime years I found myself picturing Sally as Midge from The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. I could hear Midge’s voice in Sally.
This storyline also included two other main characters: Lapo and Alessandro. But this is Sally’s story in my opinion.
Was the title of the book deceptively positive sounding? Did the word “adventure” make it sound like Sally had a jolly old time in Italy? It definitely did. But, here’s the crazy thing, as much as I personally found this book to be sad at times and not really an “adventure”, I’m pretty darn sure it was indeed an Adventure for Sally.
I was given an early copy of this book by the Book Club Cookbook. Thank you.
Amazingly, she meets an actress while attempting to sell her flowers. The actress, Patsy, falls for Sally immediately and takes her home to adopt her.
This is where we start with Sally. She spends a few years in the lap of luxury. She’s not hungry, she has a comfortable room to herself and life is good.
Then Sally’s adoptive parents split up and Patsy gets creative in her attempts to support the two of them. She, at first, becomes a writer calling herself Bon Vivant. But it soon becomes clear that Patsy can’t handle the job and she fancies Sally’s wardrobe and appearance up and turns her into the Bon Vivant.
Sally spends a few years rubbing elbows with the highest tiers of their society. She meets royalty and movie stars. And she secretly writes gossip about them and their parties.
But Fascism is rising in popularity and things are about to change again.
Sally and Patsy seem to get split up around this time. This part confused me. I know Sally is in her late teens or early twenties by this point but it felt like Patsy disappeared (maybe I missed the author saying where she was-there were a ton of little details and I definitely could have overlooked this one).
Now Sally, formerly an American, now living in Italy becomes a prisoner of war.
In this part of the book, Sally goes through her hardest times. But she always, always tried to make the best of everything. The author mentions at the end in her author’s note that some people took this attitude when trying to live through those years, they got through the bad stuff by still trying to find and enjoy the good stuff.
But it’s just so hard to believe someone could be as optimistic as Sally during everything that was going on. Was she being overly positive? Was she unaware of how bad things were? I don’t think she was. I think she just really truly found a way to be an optimist in the middle of it all.
It’s funny, when the book switched to the wartime years I found myself picturing Sally as Midge from The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. I could hear Midge’s voice in Sally.
This storyline also included two other main characters: Lapo and Alessandro. But this is Sally’s story in my opinion.
Was the title of the book deceptively positive sounding? Did the word “adventure” make it sound like Sally had a jolly old time in Italy? It definitely did. But, here’s the crazy thing, as much as I personally found this book to be sad at times and not really an “adventure”, I’m pretty darn sure it was indeed an Adventure for Sally.
I was given an early copy of this book by the Book Club Cookbook. Thank you.
Content Warnings
Graphic: War
Moderate: Abandonment