THE MONTH OF “LOVE” IS FULL OF NOT ONLY LOVE, BUT ALSO TREATS. Jenna Evan Welch’s “Love and Gelato” surrounds both love and gelato in a sweet love story filled with adventure and mysteries that is perfect for a weekend afternoon or on a flight to Italy.

Teenager, Lina, is sent to spend her summer in Tuscany after the death of her mother. Although she is in a beautiful country, she has no interest as she was only there to get to know her father as it was her mother’s dying wish. However, Lina discovers her mother’s journal that she kept during her years in Italy and goes down a rabbit hole of her mother’s past. Soon, she is pulled into a friendship and budding romance with a boy named Ren, who helps her follow in her mom’s footsteps across Tuscany to find what her mother was hiding in her journal. And it will change everything Lina knew about herself and her mother.

Lina’s adventure brings in the admiration for the country of Italy along with its customs, history and architecture. It is an inspiration to many who wish to visit Italy or any European country in the future. Welsh’s use of a diary to tell not one story, but two and it leads to Lina’s significant changes across the novel as she learns to heal from wounds left by death and begins to live her life with the new people around her. 

Welsh also has two other books that collide with Love and Gelato: Love and Luck follows Lena’s best friend, Addie, across Ireland and Love and Olives follows a girl named Olivia across Greece.