Love & Olives is a journey — a transportive and unexpectedly emotional story about trying to find something that was once thought to be lost.

Jenna Evans Welch is so good at what she does! Her ability to completely transport a reader to the setting of her books and evoke every emotion is top-tier. The feeling of complete immersiveness when reading her stories is incomparable!

Love & Olives is very layered. On the surface is a story about a teenager who gets a second chance at a relationship with the father that abandoned her while going on the adventure of a lifetime. Beneath that is a coming-of-age story with a lot of emotional depth as Olivia tries to keep moving forward with a future of her own while also trying to piece together all of the brokenness from her past. There’s also a charming boy in the mix! My emotions were basically in a blender for all 500+ pages!

Speaking of, I think the length of the book was its only downfall. 500 pages for a YA contemporary seems like a lot. Personally, I feel that if a reader isn’t super interested in reading and learning about Atlantis, they’re going to struggle with this one. While I really enjoyed that element, those parts of the story seemed overwhelming at times, in the sense that they take up a large amount of the real estate in this book.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Love & Olives! Check this one out if you’re looking for those summer vibes with a magical setting, a fun adventure, a sweet romance, and lots of feels!

*Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book. This did not affect my opinion or the content of my review.

This final book in the series was quite a letdown. I loved the first two books in the series and was excited to travel along side the character in the third. Disappointing.

I really enjoyed this book. Jenna Evans Welch has a way of making the setting another character in the most beautiful way. Traveling to Greece with these characters was such a gift.

Review will be posted on 9/8/22
Liv is headed to Santorini her senior year of high school to meet up with her father, who is working on a documentary on the lost city of Atlantis. This should be the chance of a lifetime, right? Wrong. Liv's father left her when she was only eight years old, so their relationship is severely fractured. Once she arrives in Greece, things are pretty awkward and there's a lot of unspoken angst. While there on Santorini, she meets Theo, her father's employee, and she starts to have feelings for him. Fans of light romance will like this aspect of the novel.

Also, each chapter in Love & Olives starts with a different item that Liv's father left behind for her when he left many years ago and why that item is so important to him. This was a clever way to shape the story and to get to know her father. While on beautiful Santorini, Liv learns about why her father has always been obsessed with Atlantis and how there's much more to it than she first thought. Readers who enjoy Welch's YA novels that featuring traveling to stunning locales won't be disappointed. I mean who hasn't dreamed of spending extended time in Greece?

Cute, cute, cute, cute, cute! Did I mention how cute it was?? I absolutely adore Jenna Evans Welch's story.

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book had an amazing plot, but I felt the characters were a bit hard to connect to.

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

A great follow-up to a beloved YA series in my school, I appreciate the ease and humor in Welch's titles. My students appreciate your approachable writing and realistic characters.

Loved being immersed in the Greece setting! My favorite was the first book of the series, but enjoyed this nonetheless.

I love everything Jenna Evans Welsh! She is amazing and I love the Love & Gelato series. Love & Olives came just in time for me because I love Greece and the idea of a summer romance on holiday sounds amazing to me. Theo is amazing I loved him from the moment we met him in the book. The fact that he has a nickname for Olive is hilarious and I love it! I really liked how this book read, almost like a romcom movie. I wish there was more communication and resolve between Liv and her father but overall I really enjoyed this novel.

3.5/5 stars

Olive (“Liv”) feels as though she is being summoned to spend a couple of weeks in Greece with her long-absent father. Apparently, he needs her help— probably with his hare-brained search for Atlantis, which is why he left Liv and her mom eight years ago. But when she arrives in Santorini, Liv learns that there is more to the story than what she’s been reciting to herself all these years.

Unlike the first two books in this series, Liv’s story is more focused on her relationship with her dad. Yes, there is a romance, but it’s not the main point. In fact, the “bow at the end” would have been better, imo, if she and Theo hadn’t gotten together. Either way, I saw the [redacted] coming pretty early on. But I only predicted the [redacted] a chapter or two before the reveal. The inclusion of the mental health storyline was really nice; we don’t get enough bipolar representation.

I could not ge it to the book… I did like the setting but I found myself getting annoyed with the main character every chapter.

Liv hasn't seen her father since she was eight and he left her to go in search of Atlantis. So when her mother tells her she's going to spend the summer in Santorini with him, she's not that enthusiastic. When she arrives, however, she learns that he wants her to help him and his young assistant, Theo, to make a documentary for National Geographic. Although I never really got the connection between this book and the other two in the series, I really enjoyed this novel. Jenna Evans Welch really knows how to write a great YA story. The teens are believable and she isn't afraid to deal with deeper issues (parental abandonment, mental health issues, etc.) I will definitely read more from her in the future!

I really enjoyed this book. Especially the setting! I liked reading Liv's story and exploring her complicated family relationships. It was the perfect ending to this book series.

Wow this book gave me full Mamma Mia vibes! One thing I love so much that Jenna Evans Welch does is the character development in each of her books, and this one felt like the one where she did it the most. Throughout her books, Welch's writing and development has gotten better, as well as her ability to bring up important topics. The one part of the book that brought down the rating a star for me was the love interest of the main character, there was little development between the two and it made the plot awkward.

I loved this author's second book, but found I just didn't connect with this one as much. The plot was more intense and mysterious, therefore a much longer book as well. I found myself getting bored with the character and she dwelled on insecurities, though I am not a teen so that is likely more my issue rather than the character's. The setting once again was the best part of this trilogy.

This is the 3rd book I e read by this author, I was super excited to read Love and Olives. I thought that this YA romance was cute but it was a little long for me. I enjoyed the storyline with Olive and her Dad, but the parts with Atlantis definitely were too slow for my liking. I found the setting in Greece and the adventure aspect fun, but when the story discussed Atlantis I found myself a little bored. I loved Liv and Theo and their chemistry but I just didn’t love this one. It did wrap up nicely though.
Love and Gelato has definitely been my favorite in this trio.

Thank you to the publisher for my review copy.
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Ahhhh Jenna Evans Welch. This series holds my heart. I have adored Love & Gelato and Love & Luck....but dare I say this is my favorite? I am utterly and completely charmed.
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One of the best things about this series...you do not have to read them all. They absolutely can be read as a standalone. But why? Read all three, trust me.
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YA can be a tricky genre for me. J.E.W has a way of writing that I completely forget that I am reading YA and that works well. The characters jump off the page. Love & Olives was no different.
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What I think makes this book so special is Atlantis. What a magical, intriguing place and Greece. Yes ma'am. I have always wanted to go to Greece and going to Greece through this story. Delightful. If Jenna keeps writing these amazing stories, I will keep reading them.
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If you like The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants. These stories are for you!

Olive Varanakis's father was obsessed with the lost city of Atlantis, and since he was born and raised on the island of Santorini, Greece, he left Olive in the US with her mother when she was eight years old and returned to the island. He has only sent a few occasional post cards, but Liv (as she prefers to be known now) has a box with the 25 items he left behind him, which included their favorite annotated map of Santorini. As she is preparing to apply to colleges (her boyfriend, Dax, wants her to go to Stanford with him, but she would rather go to the Rhode Island School of Design to pursue her art work), she gets a post card from her father asking her to come and spend time with him as he is working on a project. Her mother insists that she go. After a long flight, she is met by the exuberant but entirely unknown Theo, who is her age, very attractive, and does seem to know who her father is. Her luggage is sent separately as she takes off with Theo on his motorcycle. Her father has arranged a big party in her honor and given her a set of very special oil paints, but she is still irritated. She is sharing a small room right off the bookstore that Theo's mother owns with Theo, and the two spend a lot of time together working on a documentary about Atlantis that her father thinks National Geographic will feature. There are many problems along the way, family secrets revealed, light romance, but most of all, a chance for Olive to connect with her heritage and make things right with her father.
Good Points
This is a Young Adult novel that will also be popular with middle school readers. Liv isn't thrilled about spending time in Greece, but she doesn't complain, either, and she embarks on the documentary with good humor. The descriptions of Santorini are great, and I loved Theo and his mother, especially the book store. This gets into a lot of information about her father's mental health at the end, and I don't want to spoil that plot line, but it was well done and helped Liv make sense of her childhood and some anxiety that she herself has. The cover is fantastic! Understated and in pretty colors.

The first two books, which are not related to this in any way that I can figure (other than the general theme of traveling) are hugely popular in my library. I do love books about Greece, so I'm definitely purchasing this, but I wish it had mentioned the scholarly archaeology that has been done on Santorini!

Most readers won't care about this, but I was really surprised that there is no mention of the archaeological digs done in the at Akrotiri on Santorini by Spyridon Marinatos, or of Sir Arthur Evans and Knossos (although Olive does meet a man whose boyfriend is an archaeologist vaguely studying "the Minoans"). Why do I care? I was lucky enough to visit the site with Nanno Marinatos in 1985 and heard about all of the theories about Atlantis!

This book was beautiful and I cried.

This book had such a warm and heartfelt message that really I didn’t think I needed. But as someone who struggled with familial ties you really should never stop trying because you never know when it’ll be too late.

Liv and Theo and their romance warmed my heart. But their love was not the focal point of the story as this was a father daughter love story more than anything.

Love & Olives is like a vacation in a novel. I read this while quarantining and it was almost like being in Santorini with Liv. It’s the perfect light YA novel, complete with a likable main character, swoon-worthy love interest, and a gorgeous setting with an amazing bookstore! I loved this book from start to finish and would highly recommend it for anyone in need of a getaway.