Upon her daughter, Marina's graduation from college, Elizabeth Caldwell decides to take her, and herself, on a trip to Italy. She hopes the trip will allow them more bonding time. Of course, the trip becomes much more than that as each woman, in different stages of their lives, discover new things about themselves, and each other.

I wanted to like this book, but a few big things held me back. One little thing that bothered me were the "Dear Abby" type letters that were written at the very beginning of each chapter. Often they'd loosely mirror what had just happened or what was going to happen in the story, but overall they seemed misplaced and disjointed. At times the advice, perhaps an attempt at humor, really wasn't very funny. By the time I got to the middle of the book, I'd skip those parts completely.

Another thing that bothered me about this book was its title. "Tuscan" Holiday conjures up images of soaking up the sights of Italy, but instead of soaking, I felt the sights were just touched upon. Little detail was given to the journey itself. Instead I felt the backdrop could have really been anywhere. There was, however, more attention paid to Italian food rather than Italian culture.

But perhaps the biggest thing that irked me about Tuscan Holiday were the characters themselves, mainly the character of Marina, the daughter. At twenty-one, she was rather self-obsessed, self-righteous and downright rude to her mother. Even after having a change of heart I still felt a lot of Marina's motives were in the best interest of Marina. Any reader could see her uptight character was destined for change, but the way it comes on so suddenly after such a slow buildup seems far-fetched. Even the motives of characters at home i.e. Marina's grandmother and Elizabeth's mom never get explained. I just feel like if they were going to bother giving a bit of back story then perhaps that should have been the focus and we could have added those characters to the mix right at home, rather than an exotic locale, seemingly picked at random.