The two stars I'm giving this is for it allowing me to armchair travel back to the Amalfi Coast and vicariously enjoy the descriptions of places I visited and food I ate. I'd also give it perhaps a half-star for the creative (though potentially confusing) construction of the time travel aspect, and the recognition that motherhood is often as much about identity-lost as it is identity-gained. So why, then, am I not falling in line with everyone who loved this book?

Mainly because the mother/daughter relationship read like a caricature of co-dependency. It made it hard for me to like the protagonist, because I found her pathetic, sheltered and needy. It was hard to get past that and root for her in any meaningful way. Perhaps that should've made her a sympathetic character, and perhaps my take on this says more about me than the book. In any case, I think it real life, she would be the "friend" whose calls I'd dodge.