Book vs. Movie Review: Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch
Today, I’m excited to share with you guys my book vs. movie review for Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch. I’m gonna be completely honest about this one, I didn’t know it was getting made into a movie until the day the movie came out. Then, I devoured this book in a matter of days. It was that adorable. As a general warning, this post contains spoilers for both the book and the movie, but I always warn you before I write about them!!
If you just want to see the differences between the book and the movie, scroll down to the bottom and I have them listed in a very detailed fashion.
Book Information
Lina (pronounced Leena), just lost her mother. With her mother’s last wish being that Lina move to Italy, Lina feels like she has no choice but to comply. There, she meets Howard, her father, and ends up with a journal from her mother about the time she spent in Italy. As Lina learns about her mother’s time in Italy and how Lina eventually came to be, she meets Ren, a boy who lives next door and makes Lina feel like she can finally be herself.
As the two of them read more about Lina’s mother and grow closer together, Lina must make the hard decision of whether or not she belongs in Italy with Howard and Ren, or if she should go back to America and leave them all behind despite her mother’s last wishes.
Book Review | Heidi Dischler
Have I had bad luck in the book department lately? Yes. Have four of the five books that I read before this one been three stars or lower? Also, depressingly, yes. This book is not one of those!!
I really adored this book. It was such a welcomed break from reality and I honestly never wanted to put it down. It had wholesome romance, parental secrets that must be discovered, and a whole lot of gelato. It honestly reminded me a lot of my own novel, 2,697 Pages minus the gelato.
I appreciated every Italian aspect of this book. While I’m not Italian, I have been to Italy, so reading all of these descriptions of places that I’ve visited myself was so amazing. The funniest part in my opinion was reading about the cab drivers and how driving in Europe is an absolute nightmare if you’re not used to it!
Jenna Evans Welch’s writing is superb. I did see a few editing and proofreading errors throughout the book that threw me off, but it had nothing to do with her style. Her writing style is so vivid and fun that I found myself laughing alongside the characters.
The romantic parts of this novel were very slow-burn, but I loved them. Sometimes I want that wholesome romance that you really don’t see in fiction and movies today. I’m writing this book review section before I watch the movie to make sure that I can separate the two easily, and I’m really hoping it keeps the wholesome vibe of the book in tact.
Also, I usually don’t like dual-timeline books, but it’s done really well here. The difference between Hadley’s time as she writes her experiences in her journal and Lina’s time as she experiences Italy were both interesting enough for me not to want to skip a single part (which usually happens when I read books with dual-timelines).
The only thing that I didn’t like about this book was the villain of the story. The villain completely lacked substance and was so one-dimensional that it hurt a little bit for me to think of him as a character. I’ll keep the spoilers for this book review out and talk about them more once I’ve watched the movie.
Overall, though, this book was exactly what I needed to continue this extreme reading binge I’ve been on. Because if this book would’ve been subpar, I think I would’ve been booked out (weird, I know). But thankfully, this book delivered the content I needed and was the perfect book for a hot summer weekend. If you need me, you can find me at the grocery store searching for gelato that might be a fraction as good as it is in Italy.
Source: Personal Copy
“I made the wrong choice.”
– Jenna Evans Welch, Love & Gelato
Movie Review | Heidi Dischler
Alright, I’m going to try and review this as objectively as I can since I already read the book and was expecting something (very different, mind you) from the very beginning.
I think the actors and actresses were great. I think that they all had a considerable amount of talent, especially Susanna Skaggs, who played Lina. She was goofy and adorable and she played the whole role very well. I also loved the piano theme music for the whole movie. I thought it was beautiful and fit the tone perfectly.
As far as writing goes, this movie could’ve done a whole lot better. From the very beginning, I was unsure what this movie wanted to be. A lot of the romantic scenes fell flat. Things that were supposed to be emotional just… weren’t. The reason I’m saying this in the writing section is because I don’t think they gave enough depth and backstory to any of the characters. It made all of the emotions in the movie just not work.
Too much time was spent with Alessandro only to have him sitting with another girl at a restaurant. The whole opera scene with Alessandro? It came straight from the script of Pretty Woman (which I love, by the way, I just didn’t love it here). Everything felt so forced. I loved that they tried to give him the “my father wants me to do something but I don’t want to” storyline, but it went absolutely nowhere. They just ditched him completely when Lina did. On to Lorenzo.
So, Lorenzo was definitely a better pairing for Lina personality-wise, which brings me to my biggest question of all: why did the movie focus on Alessandro more???? I felt like Lorenzo’s scenes were so minute compared to Alessandro’s infinite amount of screen time. I don’t want to spoil the movie, but a lot of things that happened with Lorenzo and Lina really made me so angry.
Okay, now for the Mom and Howard subplot. Why didn’t Lina get to spend more time with Howard in the movie? It was like the screenwriters were so focused on love that they neglected to flesh out the one backstory that gave this story so much emotion in the first place. Dear Lord, I mean come on. Everything that Howard said had no emotional drive because his character was nowhere to be seen the whole movie! It was Lorenzo this and Alessandro that. Not Howard. Which was super depressing.
Overall, I wanted to like this movie, but fifteen minutes in and I already knew it was a flop for me. Younger audiences might like it more, but I, however, did not. Not to mention, the gelato orgasm scene? Completely threw the whole movie off because nothing in this movie was sexual until that. If I had to rate this on a five star scale? Sadly, two out of five stars. That second star is for the actors and actresses. They deserved so much better than this sad attempt at a story.
Where to Watch: Netflix
Book vs. Movie (The Differences)
Here comes major spoilers so don’t go any further if you still need to read the book or watch the movie!!!
Minor Differences:
- Lina went to Rome instead of Florence. (What was the point of switching these around except to maybe make book fans upset?)
- Grandparents passed away already when in the books they were alive and mostly well.
- Thomas is now Alessandro.
- Francesca replaced Sonia.
- Lorenzo is the one who shows Lina the secret bakery. I think this takes away a lot from the bond Lina found with her mother while staying in Italy. It made a lot of the places she went less special because they had nothing to do with her mother.
- Mimi is now Giorgia (with a 100% difference in what I’d imagined Mimi to be).
- Hadley didn’t get into the prestigious photography school. She just took a photography class (which was upsetting to me because Hadley was described as the talented and famous photographer and it was also where she met Francesca, Howard, and Matteo).
- Francesca is actually part of the story when in the book she was only heard from once on the phone.
- Francesca and Howard are cousins.
- Lina goes to Florence to find Matteo instead of Rome (again, I see no need for the switch that they did).
- Addie comes to Rome. Just seemed unnecessary in my opinion and could’ve been done away with had they given Howard a larger role.
MAJOR DIFFERENCES:
- Lorenzo graduated already (I consider this a major difference because it plays a huge part in he and Lina not getting to be together because of bad timing).
- Lina ISN’T LIVING WITH HOWARD and HOWARD DOESN’T WORK IN A CEMETERY HE WORKS AT A UNIVERSITY. Like I mentioned in my movie review, they took away all the main thing that made this book so emotional and wonderful. Howard was basically her father figure and they took that away from him by giving him a much smaller role in the movie.
- Fran gives Lina the journal and says her mother wanted her to have it, which I find to be a major difference because her mother wanted Howard to have it so he could know how much she loved him.
- No evil exchange with dear ole Dad. Just shoving her way into his office, looking at him, then leaving. In the book they got to yell at each other. It was much more satisfying.
- The train station kiss still happens, but Lorenzo is still dating Giorgia so he’s technically cheating on her, and he doesn’t push Lina away. She still says it’s a mistake later, but this scene peeved the heck out of me.
- Okay, okay, what is up with Hollywood writers and the need to use every cliche in the book?? Lina has to chase Lorenzo down at the train station with no time to spare because he’s going to Paris to be a chef. In the book, Lina and Lorenzo just yell at each other at the party. Super weird how that had to try and add emotional charge to a scene that did it much better in the book.
- Last major difference. Lina chooses herself. While I get the message that they wanted to send, it makes no sense for her to go all the way over there to tell him that for them only to get together after a year when the timing still isn’t right because she’s going back to America. In the book, she decides to stay in Italy indefinitely, she goes to the same school as Ren, and they get to be together. The movie scene was just dumb.
Can you tell that I really didn’t like the movie? To finish up my rant, I really want to know something. What’s the point of having a loyal following from the books (that you can market to and make money off of when you make the movie) only to change every possible thing you can think of from the book until the movie is unrecognizable from its source material?? I’ve been saying this for a while, but I’m pretty upset with the movie industry because they can’t seem to make anything worth watching anymore. Word of advice, if you know you have a book that was successful and you want to make a movie out of it? Follow the storyline as best as you can. Don’t turn it into a completely different story. You’ll get better ratings and more money from people who actually want to watch it.
