Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⬜
Title: Love & Gelato
Author: Jenna Evans Welch
Genre: YA Fiction/ YA Romance
Author Info: She/ Her
Setting: Seattle, WA & Florence, Italy
Month Read: February 2021
Book Type: Paperback
Publication: 2016
Pages: 386
Trigger Warning:
Illness, Death, Abandonment, Grief
"You know, people come to Italy for all sorts of reasons, but when they stay it's for two things- Love & Gelato."
No Spoiler Summary:
Love & Gelato is an adorable 386 page YA meet cute/romance about a girl, Caro(Lina) who loses her mom to cancer and gets shipped off to Italy to live with the biological father she has never met.
Shortly after arriving to the cemetery/WWII memorial live with Howard, Lina comes to be in possession of her mother's journal from when she was living in Italy- and inside the front is written- "I MADE THE WRONG CHOICE." What choice? What was wrong about it? Is this about Howard? About photography school? About moving to Italy from Seattle?
Lina needs to discover her mother's story, and sleuth her way to finding out what Hadley meant by writing this. Figuring out more about her Mom, the book takes Ren and Lina on a thrilling, extravagant adventure throughout Florence.
As Lina reads more and more of the journal, things aren't always what they seem- and Lina grapples with the mother she knew, vs. the Hadley written into the pages of this journal. Lina and Ren (and Howard!) take themselves to places Hadley had visited, and Lina tries to find her Mother in every stop. Some places are just as magical as she imagined, and some are filled with the same heartbreak her mother had experienced. Will Lina make the right choice- will she find her "La notte piu bella de la mia vita?"
Review:
Lina and I had a lot of things in common, which made me REALLY fall for this book. From meeting my disappointing biological father when I was 15, to having an amazing "step" father- I really felt for Lina's journey finding the family Hadley had given her.
From taking Italian throughout high school (which made reading the occasional phrases peppered in the book so much more fun for me) - and knowing about some of the fun destinations Lina (and Hadley) visited- and all the delicious food they tasted- it was an absolute treat getting to 'visit' Italy during a time we can't travel anywhere.
LOVE & GELATO had so many beautiful, fun, emotional parallels with my life (minus actually getting to LIVE in the Italian countryside---err... cemetery) and you'd be hard pressed to not find this fun, fluffy, charming little love story perfect for snowy February days in cold, drab Connecticut.
I immediately ordered the two other books in this series (Love & Luck- a road trip through Ireland with Lina's best friend Addie, and Love & Olives- a tale set in Greece!) after I finished reading this- so check out my reviews for both!
Recommendation:
If you're into YA Meet Cutes and romance:
The Summer I Turned Pretty Series by Jenny Han
When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
The Statistic Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
Authors to read:
Lana Wood Johnson
Lauren Myracle
Lauren Gibaldi
Sarah Dessen
If you're into YA books that transport you to faraway destinations:
The Loose Ends List by Carrie Firestone
The Fault in our Stars by John Green
Let's Get Lost by Adi Alsaid
"I was standing on a tower in the middle of Tuscany, & the sunrise was so beautiful that it hurt. And that was something."