Drawing on the rich tradition in both film and fiction of romance stories set in the Tuscany region of central Italy, Jenna Evans Welch’s romantic comedy Love & Gelato (2016) tells the story of 16-year-old Lina Emerson. Reeling from the death of her mother, a noted photographer, Lina reluctantly sets off from her home in Seattle to spend the summer in Florence with a father she has never met. Reading her mother’s entries in a journal she kept during her own stay in Florence just before Lina was born, Lina discovers a passionate, romantic side of her mother. In the process, Lina discovers her own passionate side as she finds herself caught between her attraction to a British exchange student and a charming local—a dilemma similar to the one her own mother faced some 20 years earlier and recorded in her journal.

The novel shifts between Lina’s first-person narration and excerpts from her mother’s journal. This contrapuntal narrative chronicles both Lina’s and her mother’s journeys to self-discovery. Along with the theme of self-discovery, the novel explores The Difference Between Love and Passion, The Dynamic of Loss and Recovery, and ultimately the complicated Definition of a Father.

Love & Gelato, the first book in Welch’s popular “Love &” series, was an immediate New York Times and Amazon bestseller. Within months of its publication, it was optioned by Netflix Films and released in 2022 with Susanna Skaggs, a familiar presence in rom coms, playing Lina Emerson.

The study guide uses the 2017 Simon Pulse paperback edition.

Content Warning: The novel depicts abuses of power and grooming behavior between a university professor and his student. It also discusses rape in Roman mythology.

Plot Summary

Shortly before her death from pancreatic cancer, Hadley Emerson, a noted photographer, gets her 16-year-old daughter Carolina (“Lina”) to promise that she will travel to Florence, Italy, to finally meet and get to know her “friend” Howard Mercer—a man Lina has never heard of previously—who is the caretaker of the American Cemetery and Memorial, the resting place for hundreds of American soldiers killed during World War II. Only after her mother’s death does Lina’s grandmother tell Lina that Howard is her father.

Reluctantly, Lina agrees to spend the summer in Florence with Howard. Despite the awkward situation, Howard greets Lina warmly. Lina finds out that before she died, her mother forwarded a journal she kept while studying photography at Florence’s Academy of Art to a friend of Howard’s. Lina, still grieving her mother, puts off reading the journal.

Lina meets an Italian American named Lorenzo “Ren” Ferrera and is immediately attracted by both his looks and his kind heart. Ren, however, is involved with Mimi, whom Lina describes as “exquisitely beautiful.” Lina also meets Thomas Heath, the handsome scion of a wealthy British family. Both Thomas and Ren are students at the school that Lina will attend if she decides to stay in Florence beyond the summer. Lina and Ren strike up a friendship. Ren shows Lina the sights of Florence, most notably introducing her to the region’s signature dessert, gelato. Lina, for her part, confides in Ren her conflicted feelings about meeting her father for the first time. Ren lends a sympathetic ear.

Lina begins to read her mother’s journal. She discovers that when her mother lived in Florence, she had a passionate, clandestine affair with a teacher from the academy, who she identifies only as X. Lina assumes X is Howard, who, at the time, held a graduate teaching appointment in the academy’s history department. But when the journal entries mention Howard by name, Lina knows that X cannot be Howard. A lead provided by a friend of her mother’s leads Lina to the name Matteo Rossi, who now runs a prestigious gallery and photography school in Rome. Using the journal entries, Lina figures out that her mother’s affair with Rossi led to the pregnancy. A portfolio photograph of Rossi on his gallery’s website stuns Lina—there is no doubt she is his daughter; the resemblance is uncanny.

With Ren in tow, Lina heads to Rome to meet her biological father. His reaction stuns Lina. Professor Rossi angrily denies any relationship to her and dismisses her mother as “a stupid child in love with her instructor […] regardless of what her fantasies were [he] was her teacher, nothing more” (284). Reeling from his rejection and in tears, Lina impulsively but passionately kisses Ren to thank him for helping her find Matteo. Not wanting to mess up Ren’s relationship with Mimi, Lina quickly apologizes and assures him they will always be just friends.

More confused than ever, Lina returns to Florence. Ren avoids her, and Lina assumes it’s because of Mimi, but at a party she attends with Thomas, Lina finds out that before their trip to Rome, Ren had actually broken up with Mimi to pursue the possibility of a relationship with Lina. Buoyed by the possibility of a relationship, Lina confronts Ren. He admits he was put off by her dismissal of their burgeoning relationship as anything but a friendship and feels hurt by her involvement with Thomas. They part.

That night, Ren awakens Lina by tossing coins through her bedroom window. The two meet and declare their love for each other. Lina tells Ren how she does not look forward to crushing Howard’s feelings by telling him that Matteo Rossi is actually her father. When she gives Howard the journal, however, she finds out that Howard knew all along that he wasn’t her biological father. He agreed to help Hadley during her pregnancy because he loved her. When Hadley contacted him after her cancer diagnosis, Howard agreed to tell Lina he was her father and to help her in any way he could. In the midst of her illness, Hadley had realized that, in leaving Florence and Howard behind, she made the biggest mistake of her life. She forwarded the journal and made Lina promise to travel to Florence so that Lina and Howard would have each other when she was gone.

Realizing the depth of Howard’s good heart, and with the promise of a relationship with Ren, Lina agrees to stay in Florence. For the first time since her mother’s death, Lina anticipates what tomorrow might bring with excitement.