Reviewed by Emma Crowley
When Jessica’s grandfather left for war, he promised to keep a record of each day he was apart from her grandmother. The diary was lost along with him – until now, when a mysterious, handsome Italian man named Alessandro shows up at Jessica’s door with the diary in hand.
Immediately enchanted by her grandfather’s accounts of Italy’s glittering golden hours, Jess decides to spend a summer in Tuscany before she’s due to take over at her family’s farm. She hopes she can visit the places her grandfather once did – and finally find out what really happened the night he died…
In the historic city of Siena, she finds a job as companion to the glamorous Sofia – Alessandro’s grandmother – whose stories of Italy during the war are captivating. And as Jess spends more time with Alessandro, she begins to fall for him with each lingering look into his deep-brown eyes.
Together, Jess and Alessandro visit her grandfather’s resting place. But the more Jess learns about her grandfather’s time in Italy, the more she’s forced to question whether everything about her family’s past is a lie…
Jess came to Italy in search of answers, but time is running out. She can’t shake the feeling that the diary that has stolen her imagination is merely a work of fiction. And if it is, will the truth about her family inspire her to turn away from the path she thought she was destined for, and towards the life she truly wants?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Tuscan Diary to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Tuscan Diary is the second book that I have read by Anita Chapman and once again it has a stunning cover which evokes the setting of the book. Initially, I had thought that this would be historical fiction but once I settled into the story I found it to be a more modern read with threads of the past specifically events in World War Two running through it at intervals. I will say for me I don’t think it was quite as good as the previous book, The Florence Letter, but I still enjoyed it. Anita Chapman writes wonderfully descriptive passages of Italy, specifically Siena, and you feel as if you are there with the main character Jess as she experiences the sights, smells and sounds of a country new to her. Jess undergoes a journey throughout the book which leads to a transformation in her life path but along the way plenty of secrets are revealed which affect her family.
An intriguing prologue set in Italy gives us a brief flavour of what is to come. To be honest when the scenes in the prologue popped up again further on in the book I had completely forgotten about the opening and it was pleasantly surprising but it meant I understood more about certain things. The first chapter takes us to 1942 and we meet Eleanor who works in a stationary shop. One day, Peter, the brother of her friend Mabel, appears in the shop. He is about to be shipped out to fight who knows where. They had shared a kiss many years ago and there is a small flicker of affection still present. Peter purchases a leather-bound notebook in which he promises to write all his experiences down. Eleanor spends the night with Peter and soon after she leaves for Yorkshire to go to Birch Farm where she will work as a Land Girl. She soon realises Peter left her with a gift and her dreams are quashed as she has no other option to but to marry Jack the son of the family who reside at Birch Farm.
Fast forward to 1993 and Jess and her mother Mary and grandmother Eleanor are at Birch Farm when an visitor arrives at the door. American/Italian Alessandro comes bearing the diary of Peter whom Eleanor knew to have gone missing in action during the war. Alessandro reveals some surprising information but Eleanor is glad to have the diary but she insists Jess be the one to read it. I felt that there were a lot of reveals in the first quarter of the book. That too much was been given away and that there was no element of surprise or shock. I questioned why was the reader given so much information without a little bit of uncovering a mystery and in turn where could the story possibly go from here? But I needn’t have worried as the author had things fairly plotted out and this is the point where I realised this was more about Jess’ journey in the present and in fact a more modern story was unfolding than I had initially presumed would. Elements of the past would come into play but they only fuelled Jess’ story in the present.
Jess was similar to both her mother and grandmother in that they gave up their dreams for the men they married and this was potentially the case for her as her parents were putting pressure on her to marry Tom. Tom was a neighbouring farmer whom she had been in a relationship with for several years but he is completely different to her and their relationship had been floundering even if Tom didn’t think so. Jess couldn’t see herself marrying a farmer and being tied down to the land for so many years. She has her own dreams and aspirations and with the discovery of the diary and a new friend in Alessandro whose family has ties to her grandfather Peter maybe now is the time for Jess to stretch her wings. To venture out into the big bad world and pursue her aspirations to become a travel writer. You could see that Jess was stilted by the life she was living in Yorkshire and although she has a close relationship with both her mother and grandmother she didn’t want the same life that they had had. Eleanor urges Jess to seize the moment and instead of continuing to be bored with her life and be the people pleaser that she is known for Jess enrols on a three month Italian language course in Siena.
The chapters from this point on were good just detailing Jess’ life in Italy. The people she meets, the food she eats etc but they weren’t earth shattering or overly exciting. I wanted a bit more of rooting through the past to bring the two timelines together for surely the diary as she read through it had her intrigued? Her stay is extended when she becomes an au pair/companion for Alessandro’s grandmother and here a connection with Peter is established but still there wasn’t anything deeply engrossing occurring. Yes there was some developments between Jess and Alessandro but they felt fleeting and there was potential for much more. I was dying for them to come together and research/explore more about Peter as there were plenty of unanswered questions but this didn’t come until much later in the book and in turn it was brief and glossed over.
Jess falls in love with Italy and she is inspired by the diary and especially the famous Palio horse race in Siena. Her writing flows and she hopes to sell her work to a magazine. She becomes determined to find the answers her grandmother needs and the point where the clues dotted together for me was very good. But the last quarter or so of the book was dragged out except for what I mentioned previously regarding Peter which I felt was too rushed. The chapters just passed months in time and yes it showed Jess living her new life back in England but it didn’t really add anything to the story. As a reader I wanted a certain thing to happen but there were too many chapters near the end that seemed like filler in until I got to the point I had longed for. Which was a shame as this aspect of the story had such great potential but could have been more tightly written.
All in all The Tuscan Diary was a bit of mixed bag for me. It was very good in parts but I longed for more historical elements to the story and a bit more mystery. The descriptions of Siena and surrounding Tuscan countryside were fantastic and so evocative but the diary and that aspect of the story should have taken more precedence over Jess’. This is worth a read but would not be my favourite out of the two books that I have read by this author.
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