Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch

Love & Gelato
Jenna Evans Welch
My Rating: 💜💜💜💜

“I made the wrong choice.”

Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn’t in the mood for Italy’s famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She’s only there because it was her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn’t around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home.

But then she is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and unearth a secret that has been Ren for far too long. It’s a secret that will change everything she knew about her mother, her father—and even herself.

People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more.

“You know, people come to Italy for all sorts of reasons, but when they stay, it’s for the same two things.”
“What?” 
“Love and gelato.”

This was so freakin’ adorable! Why has it taken me so long to read this? I finished this in one day and I have no regrets.

We meet Lina right after she finds out her mother has cancer. After her mother passes, Lina moves to Italy to stay with the father she never knew. When she gets there, she is given a journal that her mother sent there before she died. Lina starts reading and is seeing Italy through her mothers history. I really enjoyed reading about Lina’s journey across Italy as she tries to solve the mystery of the journal.

I felt for Lina because losing a parent is hard. Then she’s uprooted to Italy to live with a father that she didn’t know and never heard about. She handled it better that I thought she would. You know how most YA protagonist cant be. Bratty and thinks that the world revolves around them. Well Lina wasn’t like that and I fell for her instantly.

The romance here was so damn cute that my face hurts from smiling! The author had me remembering all the feelings of first love. The butterflies and the unsureness. It was great! Besides that, the other relationship I loved to read about was the one with Lina and Howard. It might have started off rocky but it bloomed into something wonderful!

I highly recommend this as a summer read! Especially if you like fluffy and cute contemporaries. I’m already trying to get my hands on Love & Luck!

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