“One Italian Summer” and the slow, uncomfortable work of becoming
I picked up One Italian Summer expecting Italy, sunshine, grief wrapped in something warm. There were parts I genuinely resonated with — but the execution of the central premise didn't work for me, and that colored a lot of my experience reading it. Here's what stayed with me.
The Holiday Cottage: a reflective book review on burnout, rest, and independence
I picked up The Holiday Cottage by Sarah Morgan expecting exactly what the cover promised: a cozy Christmas escape, maybe some light romance, definitely something I could breeze through without much thought. But this one stuck with me. Days after finishing, I kept coming back to it—thinking about burnout, about mother-daughter relationships, and how our culture sometimes confuses independence with just being alone.