Review: Love & Olives by Jenna Evans Welch

Title: Love & Olives (Love & Gelato #3)

Author: Jenna Evans Welch

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Published: November 10, 2020- HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Pages: 500

Format: e-ARC via Netgalley, thank you @ Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster) !

When I saw this was going to be set in Greece it was an auto want to read! Santorini, Greece is my #2 bucket list place to visit. I hope that I’ll get to go someday. The descriptions from this book make me want to go even more.

This was such a great book about family, forgiveness, and love. One day Olive gets a postcard that takes her on a journey that changes everything. She ends up in Greece to meet up with her estranged father. Of course, there’s also a boy.. isn’t there always?!

One of the things I loved about this book is when Olive talks about 26 items left behind by her father. She holds onto them, as random as they may be. Throughout the chapters, she starts counting down the items and you learn about the item and the memory behind it. It really added so much to the overall story. What I wished… was that the mental illness aspect was present a lot earlier. I do love the rep but I wish we got a little more about it from the beginning.

My least favorite aspect of this book is the romance. In a way, there’s a bit of a triangle going on. Someone back home but falling for someone new. I just didn’t care for that and then had a hard time connecting to it. I did love Theo as a character though. He was a lot of fun and I was loving all his facts about olives.

I thought this book was just about a romance but it’s about so much more. Honestly, the main theme of this book is the love between a daughter and father. She’s yearning for it but having a hard time letting go of the past. In the end, there are so many things that come to light and make for such a heartwarming feel.

An interesting tidbit, which takes up a lot of space, is the fact that her dad is obsessed with finding Atlantis. Yep, the one and only Atlantis. It was a bit hard for me to connect there because there’s a lot of talk about it. I am kind of glad that we don’t spend days and days searching for it though. I was a lot more interested in what was going on with these characters. I did find my pace slowing down a bit.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It has helped pull me out of the reading slump I was in. These characters are great, especially Theo and his mom! There’s a lot of depth to the story and the descriptions of Greece amazing. A very good read!

Thank you so much to Simon Pulse & Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book!!