Love & Olives

Product Information

Both go by nicknames (Olive becomes Liv, and Carolina becomes Lina), and even these nicknames are pretty similar. How do you find the balance between romance and the serious issues that you explore in your books, like difficult familial relationships and mental health, and ensure that the romance never diminishes the more serious topics?

Sometimes you try to change yourself as a survival or defense mechanism, but that won't stop painful feelings and will keep you from being your best, truest self. If Welch had invested more time on that instead of the half-hearted attempts to create some romance, this would be a different review entirely. Since this book was set in Greece, and Liv was stuck with Theo, I wish we got to see more scenes with two teenagers having fun time exploring Greece, instead of working all the time.I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect from this book but it was compared to Mamma Mia so I figured why not! The descriptions in this had me looking up pictures of things like the Red Beach, the White Beach, the beautiful turquoise water, and just all of it. Luckily, once in Santorini, Greece, Liv and her dad have everyone on the island as a buffer- especially the attractive camera man and friend also on the project, Theo. I wish that it had been brought to light earlier in the book to open up more discussions on the topic between the characters. It's not really a tear-jerker kind of novel but I was affected by it to a degree that took me by surprise.

From the bestselling author of Frankly in Love comes a contemporary YA rom-com where a case of mistaken identity kicks off a string of (fake) events that just may lead to (real) love. This, like the other books, dealt with more serious topics as well, anxiety and mental illness in this case, and that was something I enjoyed. Going back, Olive’s attitude towards Dax was the first reason why I disliked her in the first place. Sentimental memories attached to the smell of Marlboro Smooth cigarettes while acknowledging that cigarettes are bad. Liv Varanakis doesn’t like to think about her father much, which makes sense—he fled to Greece when she was only eight, leaving her with just a few painful memories of their shared love for the lost city of Atlantis.I’d cut off twelve inches of hair, binge-watched makeup-application videos, then spent a solid month looking for clothes that were neutral and effortlessly stylish. Olive, tired, smelly, and probably closer to an emotional break than she's ever been in her life, finally sees the father who she's been talking about for the last five chapters, who she kind of lowkey hates and there's Theo. I could feel the author’s own enthusiasm for the subject come through in her writing, and it made me even more excited to continue reading. I felt another jolt in my chest, and suddenly my head was swirling, my thoughts racing by so quickly I couldn’t snag a single one.