Actual rating: 4.5. Ohmygoodness I loved this book so much. The story is strong, the characters are loveable, but it’s the setting that blew me away. Love & Olives is nothing short of travel porn. Santorini travel porn. Let me back up.

Growing up, Olive was inseparable from her father so when he left without warning (in her eight-year-old POV), she was devastated and confused, convinced she must’ve been the reason. Dad left behind their map of Atlantis, a possession treasured by both of them. Dad was and is a diehard believer in the myth of Atlantis. Discovering Atlantis was their shared dream. Didn’t he want the map anymore? Or was there a reason he left it behind? Is there a deeper reason for everything he left behind? Because Liv (yes, she’s going by Liv now) wants to know. She gathered everything in a shoebox and for the past ten years has wondered. Out of nowhere, Liv receives a postcard from her father who has been living in Greece. He needs her artistic eye for a documentary being filmed on his search for Atlantis. Will she come to Santorini for the summer? Um, what? She hasn’t seen, spoken, or heard from him in ten years and now he wants her to not only visit but help him?? Mom insists that she go. What follows is the story of Liv searching for Atlantis and finding herself.

So. Much. To. Love. 1) Santorini. The descriptions are off-the-charts amazing. I Googled every place mentioned and spent long minutes poring over the gorgeous pictures. There’s a scene where Liv and Theo sneak into an empty vacation home to swim in the infinity pool under the moonlight and it’s just . . . sigh. 2) Theo. Liv has a boyfriend and it’s not Theo. Theo is her father’s “protege.” He’s gifted with the camera and dreams of being a filmmaker so he’s the one filming the Atlantis documentary. To her boyfriend, Liv feels she needs to hide her true self. To Theo, she doesn’t. He really sees her, even more than she sees herself. He reflects her and she starts to like herself for maybe the first time since her dad left. 3) Bookstore. Theo’s mother owns a bookstore in one of Santorini’s infamous cave houses. It’s crammed and cozy and perfect. The best part of it is that one of the bookshelves IS A DOOR TO A SECRET BEDROOM. And it’s where Liv will be staying while she’s in Greece. And Theo will be her roommate (insert heart-eyes emoji here).

Love & Olives is a bit rom-com, a bit coming of age, and a bit forgiveness journey that adds up to a great read. Of the three books in Jenna Evans Welch’s Love & Gelato series, this one is the strongest by far. The experience of reading these books reminds me of my experience reading Stephanie Perkins’ Anna and the French Kiss series. Like that one, the final installment is the strongest and swooniest. I should mention that it is not necessary to read Love & Gelato nor Love & Luck to enjoy Love & Olives.

An adorable and sweet story.

Not my favorite genre, but it was a well thought out storyline. The characters are likable, there absolutely was nothing I disliked, just not my taste overall.

I have read the other books so I'm a bit conflicted on why this one didn't resonate as hard, but I'm sure it has everything to do with myself.

Love & Olives made me laugh, made me want to cry, made me want to shout!

Though broken when her father left her for his first love, Atlantis, Liv still held on to the twenty-six things he had left behind. I loved the way each chapter started with an explanation of one of them.

Theo's method of respecting Liv's request to not call her Olive caused me to grin. Every time. And then, when he started citing facts about olives each time they were together?? His love for documenting using his camera was so annoying it made him perfect!

The other characters were all rather wonderful. Her little brother, Julius, was adorable! His obsession with ninjas made me laugh! Then there was Gregory the Canadian, the clerk in the amazing bookstore with the pretend ballerina girlfriend who had a gift for naming cats. And Theo's bapou...

I do think that Nico, Liv's dad, might have been my favorite, though. His larger-than-life personality and the way he had the entire village feeling like they owed him. His passion for everything he set his heart to. And the reason behind his search for Atlantis.

Be prepared for stunning vistas of the Greek island of Santorini to come to life with the beautiful descriptions scattered throughout the story. The winding maze of the streets, the white houses designed to make the towns invisible to pirates at sea. The red, black, and white beaches. The incredible sunsets...

If you enjoy coming-of-age stories, even if you are no longer a young adult, you will enjoy Love & Olives!

Love & Gelato, the first book in the series, is still one of my favorite YA titles to recommend to readers, so being able to be a part of the tour for the third book in the series was so exciting! This book is absolutely perfect for any reader who loves to escape (hello, any of us here in 2020) on unknown adventures, and find out who we are.

Liv may be heading to Greece to reconnect with her estranged father, but this book deals with so many more important issues while she’s there — forgiveness, how to deal with past feelings, anxiety, mental health and includes it into the story beautifully.

Her boyfriend back home Dax, made it really easy for me to fall for Theo & cheer her on in her flirtations with him, often being her tour guide as she gets to explore Greece.

Welch dives right in with an endearing story full of adventure, love & family that I couldn’t have enjoyed more! & there’s a cute bookstore, SO of course, it’s a must-read! In my opinion, it’s been the best of the three books, and I thoroughly enjoyed the other two!

I was SUPER excited to get an ARC of this one but Sadly I didn’t enjoy it as much as her other novels. It feels a little redundant after just taking the same type of story and repeating it only a little bit different, you know? I still loved the cozy feels it gave off though.

Liv was supposed to be headed off on her senior trip with her boyfriend and best friend but when she receives a postcard in the mail from her absentee father everything changes. The next thing Liv knows she's sitting on a dock in Santorini, Greece waiting for her Atlantis seeking father to show up. Over the next two weeks Liv will not only take in the beauty of Santorini but come to realize there's more to why her father left than she ever knew.

With the help of a very good looking boy, the people of the village, and the views of Santorini, Liv learns about love, forgiveness, and the importance of following your dreams. I fell in love with Santorini and Liv's story. She was very relatable to me and I enjoyed all her adventures. This story also gave me the urge to look up all the stories around Atlantis and it's relation to Santorini. Maybe I'll go on an Atlantis search myself one day! I'll add it to my travel bucket list!

This is probably my favorite of the three Love & Geleto books. Each one takes us on a journey to a new place and this one really hit me hard. I have a strained relationship with my own father and could relate to the plot line. I definitely recommend this to anyone who's loved the other books in this series and are looking for their next YA Contemporary!

Overall, I enjoyed this over seas, Greek adventure and felt it fit well within the Love & Gelato series. While I still enjoyed book one more, this is a solid second. This novel was quite a bit longer than the other two books in the series. The story lagged a bit in places, and I lost interest several times. However, when the story was good it was good. The reveals hit nicely and had me tearing up at the end.

Liv Varanakis doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. Her overbearing boyfriend isn't helping, her pregnant mother is focused on her career, and she still doesn't know where she wants to go to college at the end of her senior year. Then, Liv gets a postcard from her long lost father, a self-proclaimed Atlantis hunter who left Liv and her mother when she was eight, asking if she will join him on his quest for Atlantis in his home town of Santorini, Greece. Liv doesn't want to go, but when her mom insists, Liv finds herself on a plane headed for Greece and the adventure of a life time.

This is a great addition to the Love & series! I liked that it has a more serious sub-plot. I feel that it elevated it from the rom-coms that the others are, to a solid contemporary romance. I will recommend this to fans of Jenn Bennett and Morgan Matson.

Honestly, my experiences with this series so far have been hit or miss. Meaning, book one was a miss for me and book two was a major hit. This 50/50 record was enough to still keep me super excited for book three – a book set in Greece featuring the lost city of Atlantis? YES! And honestly, I loved LOVE & LUCK enough to know the first one was a fluke. My thoughts on LOVE & GELATO were as follows:

"Pausing this for now. I don’t mind the audio narrator but I think I would be better off reading this one instead. I’ll wait for my library hold to come in. I have a feeling things may pick up, based on the synopsis, but I’m not going to carve out listening time for this one as it is right now.
——–
2nd time putting this one aside. Not sure why I can’t get into it. I tried my physical copy and had no desire to pick the book up again. I feel like I would like it but it’s not the time for me to read it. Idk. Gonna give it to my sister and see how I feel much later."

Anyways, I thought third time could definitely be the charm. I have no issue with skipping, DNFing, or avoiding the first book in a companion series in favor of book two if it still sounds up my alley. LOVE & OLIVES hit the mark for me in the synopsis, so I was eager to dive in. In 2020 where we can barely go between different states in the US, I was eager to read a book set overseas in a different pandemic-less time.

Olive, now Liv, has avoided her father’s recent postcards, since he decided to take off back to Greece when she was eight without a word. His life goal/dream has been to find the lost city of Atlantis and believes they key is in Santorini. She’s not eager to help him when he sends a postcard and a plane ticket for her to come “help him” the summer before her senior year, but her mother insists.

The first thing I thought was a little off or weird is that the synopsis says she “jumps at the opportunity” to come there and that he explains exactly what’s happening in the postcard, I was a little confused. Maybe the book underwent some edits before the final version! She definitely was not eager and he was very vague in his postcard. Not a dealbreaker, just a little weird.

I loved the “hunting for Atlantis” storyline – it was so unique! It made me want to learn more about those theories and see how many things were real in Santorini. She meets Theo, the son of her dad’s friend Ana, and the two hit it off. Liv is struggling with her boyfriend, Dax, who is home for the summer and just a little controlling about her future. (The thoughts about Dax slowed down throughout the book, which I appreciated.) Theo is helping film the documentary for National Geographic and the two have an easy, fun relationship as they film and organize everything together.

I loved reading the descriptions of Greece – I hope I can make it out there someday! It’s easy to understand why someone would want to live there or why her dad would want to go back, but it took a while to get there. She basically avoided a lot of conversations with him until the end. This plays into the pacing issues I found with the book – there was a ton of amazing, heartfelt things in the final quarter of the book, but the first 75% took me a while to read. A lot of conversations could have or should have happened earlier to get to the good stuff toward the end.

Overall, the father/daughter feels, beautiful Greek scenery, hunt for Atlantis, and cute romance, made this one a solid addition to the series! I’d love to read more books by Strohm set overseas after this collection!

While I haven't read any other books by this author, I have read good things about them. I jumped at the offer of an advanced reading copy from NetGalley and couldn't wait to read Love & Olives. Sadly, it was a real slog to get through. It truly felt like a chore to finish it. The main character, Olive's obsession with her father abandoning her as a child was constant and it got old very fast. Added to that was a book-long conflict between her devotion to a boyfriend who didn't really know her and her connection to her dad's assistant in Greece. This book was very slow-going until about the last 1/5 of the story. I did enjoy the descriptions of Santorini and now have a strong desire to visit one day.

I have some mixed feelings about this book, but I liked a lot of things. First, the stuff that I loved.

The setting is gorgeous. LOVE & OLIVES made me feel like I was in Santorini enjoying the outdoors and the sea and excited about hunting down rumors of Atlantis. I loved a lot of things about Liv. She’s smart and artistic, and I couldn’t help feeling for her as she faced this unexpected trip to reunite with her estranged father. I liked Liv’s mom, too. She’s sharp and I felt like she tried really hard to walk that balance between interfering when necessary and letting Liv make her own life choices.

I really struggled with Liv’s feelings and relationship with her dad. I feel like I’ve been burned by that kind of visionary, head-in-the-clouds type of person before, and he just seemed like he might flake out on her any second. It was hard not to worry that Liv was going to end up hurt again, and sometimes that made me angry.

I also had a hard time with Theo. I really didn’t like that he filmed her without her permission and ignored her when she asked him to stop. There were reasons in the story that made it a “good thing” that he had that footage, but I really really don’t like stories where the guy gets to override a girl’s no because he “knows better” than she does or knows her better than she knows herself or those sorts of things. I think it’s a dangerous behavior to idealize because it romanticizes someone who ultimately isn’t respecting a point-blank refusal.

That aside, I did like that Theo asked her thought-provoking questions and acted as a buffer between Liv and her dad. He did eventually grow to trust and respect Liv’s boundaries.

Her relationship with her dad went some places I wasn’t expecting. I still had a hard time because I worried that somehow he wouldn’t be accountable for the hurt he’d caused. I think the way the story explored the reasons why he disappeared and why he’d wanted to be a part of Liv’s life again were ultimately satisfying. It just took me a long time to warm to him.

Altogether, this book feels like a sweet summer romance, with a beautiful setting guaranteed to make you feel like you’re escaping reality. Ultimately I’m glad I read it. I think fans of Jennifer E. Smith will enjoy the romance of this story.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars

I have been religiously reading all the books from love and Gelato series as they come out. I love how vividly detailed these books are, given that they are travelogue kind of books I feel like it is quite important that the reader has to have a clear mind's eye picture of all the details of the place in order to vicariously travel through the book. The author yet does not disappoint with her beautiful narration, you could tell that she has gone to so many lengths in her research to write this book- after all it is a book about finding Atlantis. I truly vicariously travelled all Greece through this book

The main character Olive aka Liv is quite relatable, the plot deals with Liv's estranged father, an Atlantis hunter-whom she travels all the way to Santorini to help with his project- Finding Atlantis. There is a decade worth of unsaid words and anger she is forced to face with this sudden encounter as they try to reconnect, Liv forms a second skin in order to deal with her childhood trauma. The way she undergoes emotional turmoil in order to untangle her web of feelings are very heart warming at times, the male lead Theo is a delight to read and a total charmer. I liked the fact that the book talks about mental illness which is something I always love in my books

However, I felt like the whole theme with father-daughter theme to be quite redundant. I was disappointed that there were not many scenes/conversations in between Liv and her father which I kept looking for, some parts of the story were not realistic and too cliched. There is an expected grand gesture to the end of the books like every other book in this series which to be quite honest I never cared for because they kind of feel forced for me. That being said I still enjoyed the whole ride and will continue picking up books in this series

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher for Rockstar Book Tours. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Love & Olives

Author: Jenna Evans Welch

Book Series: Love & Gelato Book 2

Rating: 4/5

Recommended For...: romance lovers, ya readers, contemporary lovers

Publication Date: November 10, 2020

Genre: YA Contemporary

Recommended Age: 16+ (romance, slight sexual content, some language, mental illness)

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Pages: 500

Synopsis: Liv Varanakis doesn’t have a lot of fond memories of her father, which makes sense—he fled to Greece when she was only eight. What Liv does remember, though, is their shared love for Greek myths and the lost city of Atlantis. So when Liv suddenly receives a postcard from her father explaining that National Geographic is funding a documentary about his theories on Atlantis—and will she fly out to Greece and help?—Liv jumps at the opportunity.

But when she arrives to gorgeous Santorini, things are a little…awkward. There are so many questions, so many emotions that flood to the surface after seeing her father for the first time in years. And yet Liv doesn’t want their past to get in the way of a possible reconciliation. She also definitely doesn’t want Theo—her father’s charismatic so-called “protégé”—to witness her struggle.

And that means diving into all that Santorini has to offer—the beautiful sunsets, the turquoise water, the hidden caves, and the delicious cuisine. But not everything on the Greek island is as perfect as it seems. Because as Liv slowly begins to discover, her father may not have invited her to Greece for Atlantis, but for something much more important.

Review: Overall, I thought this was a fun book. The book did well to tackle anxiety and mental health, but also did great with the romance. I even enjoyed it in my seasonal gloom and doom! The characters were well developed, the world building was amazing, and I’m a fan now!

The only issue I had was that the book was a bit too slow at some parts and I felt like the book could have done better with the plot, but overall I really enjoyed it.

Verdict: I liked it!

A huge thank you to @Netgalley & Simon Pulse for the free copy of the ebook ARC. I adore this series and this author so much!

If you love a low-stress, adorable YA contemporary, most definitely check out this series. They each have different main characters, so they could be read as standalones, but they all have a female MC going through family struggles, trying to find herself, and finding unexpected love along the way. Each is set in a different country (Italy, Ireland, Greece). They’re each funny, witty, and easily read in a quick sitting or two.

This one was more emotional for me than the other two, especially at the ending. I actually teared up a bit! I found myself a bit annoyed with the search for Atlantis, and that being such a big part of the plot, but it really was tied together well at the end with a neat little bow, and it made sense.

I have not read the first two books in this series – Love & Gelato and Love & Luck, but I didn’t find that to be a hindrance to reading this one. I’m not actually sure if the same characters are in the books, or if the books just all involve love and travel. In Love & Olives, the main character travels to Santorini, Greece, to reunite with her absent father, who left the family when she was 8 years old.

This isn’t a traditional love story and is actually more of a father / daughter love story. Olive, or Liv as she likes to be called, has always thought her father left their family in order to pursue his dream of finding the lost city of Atlantis. Now, he has ramped up his search and is filming a documentary about it. Liv remembers her fathers obsession with Atlantis, and being reunited with it after all these years brings back a lot of memories of her love of exploring. Still, she is guarded and nervous about reuniting with her father.

This book had an amazing setting in Santorini and in Atlantis Books – which actually exists – where Liv stays while visiting. Liv was a somewhat immature character and at times I wanted to yell at her. Some of the plot points seemed obvious to me as an adult reader, but a younger teen might have been more surprised by them. I did enjoy this book, and would recommend it for a younger teen audience.

A huge thank you to @Netgalley & Simon Pulse for the free copy of the ebook ARC. I adore this series and this author so much!

If you love a low-stress, adorable YA contemporary, most definitely check out this series. They each have different main characters, so they could be read as standalones, but they all have a female MC going through family struggles, trying to find herself, and finding unexpected love along the way. Each is set in a different country (Italy, Ireland, Greece). They’re each funny, witty, and easily read in a quick sitting or two.

This one was more emotional for me than the other two, especially at the ending. I actually teared up a bit! I found myself a bit annoyed with the search for Atlantis, and that being such a big part of the plot, but it really was tied together well at the end with a neat little bow, and it made sense.

This is a lovely YA series full of travel, family drama and young love. I enjoyed Love & Olives and the author paints a beautiful setting of Santorini. The theme of this book is love, loyalty and forgiveness. Though there is some romance in this book, the main plot of the book centers around Olive and her dad with a touch on mental illness. I recommend this and the other books in the series to any YA contemporary reader that has a bit of wanderlust.

The first time I read a book by Jenna Welch I was swept up in Italy, the second time I was taken on an adventure through Ireland, and this time I discovered Greece. Welch has such an unbelievable talent to transport you to another place and makes you fall in love with it. I honestly hope she never stops writing these stories! What I love most is that they have so many layers to them. They have romance, they have real life issues, and they have travel. Most impressively all three of those things are executed beautifully! She has a true talent, and this story will not disappoint!

I love this series of romances, and the latest doesn't disappoint! The characters are so real, the relationships so heartwarming, and the setting so evocative. The HEA doesn't come easily, which makes it all the more satisfying. A total delight!

Love & Olives is perfect for anyone missing travel or looking for a Mamma Mia!-esque story with a deeper, more heartwarming story at its core. It’s inviting, swoon-worthy, and has enough history in it to make you feel like you’re learning something, all while staying entertaining! I loved the setting of Santorini and I certainly would love to travel there someday to see it for myself. The characters of this story are real and complex, all coming together to build a world as interesting as the Lost City of Atlantis. Overall, I recommend this book to anyone who loves YA romance, history and adventure novels. Love & Olives is the autumn release that’s powering me through to a brighter spring and summer.

I received an advanced copy of Love & Olives in exchange for an honest review. You can read my full review online now at Affinity Magazine.