Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch

Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch

 

(taken from Amazon.com)

A summer in Italy turns into a road trip across Tuscany in this sweeping debut novel filled with romance, mystery, and adventure.

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.

Love and Gelato is mildly entertaining and a quick read, but I think it lacks a certain level of depth of theme and of character. At some moments, the dialogue and narration are funny and clever, but at others they feel blase and overdone, as by an amateur. At times, I felt as if I was reading a teenager's fanfiction dialogue, the lines were so predictable. In addition, the overall plot and intrigue feels a bit underdeveloped. The plot twists are not difficult to foresee, and there are scenes where it feels as if the author was running out of ideas and so abruptly cuts off or rapidly transitions to a new scene as if they've become bored with their own characters, and have cast around for a new situation to put them in. Small details here and there are random, inconsequential, and get in the way of the story, rather than being intentional and/or meaningful. By the same token, characters too readily reveal or admit to their secrets and feelings with the slightest of pressure, so that their words seem insincere and unrealistic. Caroline, the protagonist, barely has any pressure applied to her by her new father before she dives eagerly into divulging her true feelings about one of her friends (in a most generic-sounding "confession of love" worthy of the Hallmark Channel, no less). 

Overall Rating: 4 / 10 Stars 

For something like a summer "beach read", this one is quick and easy to enjoy, but doesn't provide a wealth of depth or intrigue, or craft of writing content and style.