Love and Gelato
By Jenna Evans Welch
Teen Fiction
This book was absolutely incredible, giving a great story while maintaining a fun storyline. I would recommend this book to any teenager, especially because of the light romantic feel this story gives. Love and Gelato follows the story of a young girl finding her way through life after losing her mother. Carolina or “Lina” moves to France and lives with Howard, an old friend of her mothers. She adapts to the new life and eventually meets her love interest, Ren. Moving to a different country and losing someone you love is hard enough, but Lina finds a way through. One of the reasons I love this book is because even though it has a happy outward appearance, it has a deeper subplot almost. This subplot has to do with Lina finding out who her real dad is, which leads to more mystery and adventure.
Love and Gelato is not just a book about romance, but also a book about finding who you are as a person and where you came from. Lina, like us, is finding a way to adapt to the new situation she was put in, and demonstrates an incredible example of how to accept the things that happen to us. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a fun love story, but also to anyone who just wants a good read. It was easy to read, and easy to understand. Once I picked it up it was hard to put down because of the encaptivating plot. I also feel like the book provided more sub-genres in itself, allowing the novel to appeal to more people. It has romance, adventure, drama, and executed all of these well. I loved the way that the author set up dialogue between the characters, so then It is almost as if you are hearing or reading an actual conversation between teenagers or a teen and an adult figure. This made the book more relatable to younger audiences as well as helping further along the understanding the reader has with what is going on. Overall this book was amazing and I would 100% recommend it to any reader out there.
Book Review by Amber Westover, Orem Teen Library Council
