Love & Gelato.

☆☆☆☆☆

love & gelato.

Jenna evans welch.

Publisher : Simon Pulse. 

Publication Date: May 3,2016.

Genre: YA  Contemporary Romance. 
Format|Pages: Hardcover|390

 Source:  Goodreads|Library. 

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 Lina 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 kept from Lina 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. 

 ☂

Italy had always been one of the places that I wanted to visit. From what I seen in movies and TV shows, it looked like such beautiful place. I heard nothing but great things about it. Of course once I realized that this takes place in Italy, I had to check the book out and I got a feeling that it was going be a story that I would fall in love with. I was right. I found myself reading the books for few hours, and sometimes late into night, I couldn’t get enough of the story. Afterwards, I wanted to visit Italy more and there was a part of me that wished that I was in Italy. All those descriptions and the sights that Ren, Howard and Lina saw, they were beautifully written, and I felt like I transported right into Italy. I was sucked into Lina and Ren’s world. LOVE & GELATO filled with a lot of different emotions, and before I knew it, I could feel all the emotions that Lina was feeling. It was so real. To me, I had feeling that I learned more about Italy that I knew prior to reading the book. I was fascinated by the culture of this story.



Her mother’s letters added a mystery to the book, and that’s was one of things that I enjoyed about LOVE & GELATO was reading about her mother’s time in Italy, her own romance. Like Lina, from moment that I found that Howard was Lina’s father, I wondered how Hadley and Howard met, and how they fell in love. Expect what I read in her journals, wasn’t what I had expected. I was surprised, like Lina to find out that the mysterious X wasn’t Howard. I thought that it added a bit suspense to the story as both Ren and Lina tried to discover Lina’s mother secrets and who the secret X is. Maybe it was just met, but I feel like Lina wouldn’t gotten as far as she did, if it wasn’t for Ren helping her. In a way, he also changed her. He gave her an adventure of lifetime.



Now to Ren. Come on, how can you not love him? He’s the type of a guy that every girl dreams of. From a moment that Ren ignored Mimi’s call when he was with Lina, I had a feeling that there was something there, that Ren felt something. I wished that Lina saw that sooner than she had, and not react way that she had when something finally happened between the two of them. At first, I wasn’t sure why Ren was so mad at her, was he mad about kiss, or if there was something else. There was a part of me that wondered that maybe I been wrong, maybe he didn’t like her way that I thought he did. Especially since he started avoiding her afterwards. When two of them fought, it made sense, he was hurt about her reaction about the kiss. There was always something between two of them, it just took a bit for them to realize it. That was another thing I loved about their book, their relationship, it was realistic, they didn’t rush right into it. It was read. A magical end to a beautiful story.



Do you love Italy? A love story with suspense in the mix. LOVE & GELATO is a book that you should pick up. An unforgettable journey, about first love, secrets and family. A novel you wished you had picked up early. I fell in love, and so will you.