Love & Gelato

In this YA novel, sixteen-year-old Lina travels to Florence to fulfill her mother’s dying wish: to meet and get to know the father she never knew. Wow! There is so much to love about this book. It’s a perfect mix of romance, mystery, and adventure. It’s a genuinely wonderful coming-of-age story about coping with grief, embracing a new culture, and finding yourself in an exciting new place. Lina discovers Italy through her mother’s detailed journal. I loved how young Hadley (Lina’s mom) kept these beautiful journals and scrapbooks and was brave enough to let people read them! What sets this book apart is that it lets you experience an exciting new place through the eyes and heart of a carefree, brave, and thoughtful teen. It makes you remember those feelings you had as a teen, where adults with their worries and busy, boring lives sounded so annoying! This book feels incredibly real. I doubled up on the audiobook and really enjoyed it! It certainly helps with the pronunciation of the Italian words. This was a delightful novel with well-written characters—a feel-good read that was hard to put down.

This book was my favorite of the series (I read them out of order). There was this undercurrent of resilience and hope that was present throughout the book that I really liked. All of the characters were well rounded. It was a great read. No Spice (kissing is as far as it goes) No Explicit Language TW/CW: Mentions of cancer and sexual assault to a minor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I really enjoyed this book! It was a great read. I had fun while reading this book.

I don’t rate books five stars very easily. For me this was an easy six stars read. I adored it and read it in roughly 2 days! The plot was amazing and felt strong. I can’t remember a distinct moment when I was bored or eager to get done with a chapter. I wanted to savor every bit. A few things I feel like I need to address… A lot of people made this book sound like it was for eleven year-olds. Coming from a thirteen year-old I couldn’t disagree more. I feel like this is a perfect YA book for any age group. Whether your eleven or thirty I think this book is great if you like clean contemporary romance books. Also I forgot to mention the mystery aspect of it! The mystery wasn’t scary and it was predictable but fun. It was the cherry on top for the perfect book. Overall great book. The main character didn’t feel too dramatic or emotional. There were also some great moments that made me smile and laugh-out-loud. Great romance book.

This was such a sweet, fun book and I could have ten books following Lina and her time in Italy and still want more! I had such a good time reading this book and it got me excited about contemporaries again. It was really the best kind of contemporary to read near the end of Summer. In Love & Gelato we follow Lina after her mother has passed away and she is sent to Italy for the Summer to live with the father she didn't know she had. While in Italy, Lina is given a journal from the year her mother got pregnant with her and begins to uncover all of the mysteries her mother left behind. I think one of my favorite aspects of this book was how light it went on the romance. I had expected this book to be pretty romance-heavy, which is fine with these kind of books, but I was genuinely surprised to find that the romance was more of a subplot rather than a dominant narrative. It was really nice that we got to focus more on Lina learning more about her mother and forming a bond with the father she didn't know she had. With that being said, the romance was really sweet and fluffy and didn't feel forced at all. I really loved her romantic interest, though I did feel like the love triangle thing was a little unnecessary. It didn't hinder my enjoyment, but it also could have easily been written out. However, I do see how it is supposed to mirror her mother's love triangle struggles. I feel like maybe if the love triangle had been stronger, then it might have worked better. This sort of love triangle just didn't cut it. I also really loved how much like Mamma Mia it was. I'm not sure if that was intentional on the author's part, but I just kept being reminded of Mamma Mia. Lina's reading her mother's journal to find out things about her, she's in a foreign country, she isn't totally sure who her dad is... A lot of the same elements seem to be there which is nice for someone suffering from a Mamma Mia hangover! I've been wanting to find more books with that same feel, and I'm glad that Love & Gelato is fairly similar. Getting to know more about Lina's mother and her time in Italy was so great and could have easily been its own book! I also really liked how we got a lot of Lina's mother's journal entries to read. It really felt like we were right there with Lina finding out more about her mother. It was also cool to get to see some of Florence's history and have a little bit of Latin thrown in there! Overall this is just a really fun contemporary to read and I felt like I was breezing through it. I would imagine that just about anyone would enjoy this book and not find too much wrong with it. It's not the strongest contemporary out there, but it was so enjoyable and it was so fluffy that I have to give credit where credit is due. If you're looking for something light to read, then this book is the right one for you!

This book is so good! I would recommend this for high-school teens or older.

Um livro que tenha amor e sorvete no nome não pode ser ruim, certo? :) Love & Gelato é leve, como seu gênero promete, mas trata de assuntos profundos, com o impacto que nossas escolhas têm na nossa vida e na vida dos outros. Fala de sofrimento e superação também. O passeio por Florença é uma delícia a parte: dá vontade de realmente pegar o próximo voo e ir conhecer a cidade e toda a Toscana, além de experimentar todas as delícias da gastronomia local. Leitura rápida, boa para aquela tarde tranquila de domingo.

My 14 yr old daughter loves to read. She enjoyed it.

Ce livre est écrit en anglais. Je ne pense pas que c'était marqué. De plus la couverture de couleur crème est toute sale. C'était pour offrir

Good

Regalo de cumpleaños de mi hija, ya lo está leyendo y ya quiere conocer Italia, donde se desarrolla la historia.