- Page Response: The Use Of Time In Love And Gelato By Jenna Evans Welch

Lily Wiseman Ms. Moore English 1 H - Period 3 24 March 2023 One-Page Response: The Use of Time in Love & Gelato The book Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch is about a 16-year-old girl named Lina who has lost her mom and her mother’s dying wish was for her to go to Italy and live with her father whom she has never met. When she arrives at his house she receives a journal that her mother had written during her time in Italy around the same age as her on a journey to discover who she is. As she reads this journal, she is also navigating through her new life in Italy. This journal allows Lina to have a source of wisdom and guidance, forms a deep connection between her and her mom, as well as advances the plot. Lina is stuck in a foreign country without knowing any Italian and has no one who truly understands her there, but the journal offers a sense of comfort and strength for her because it feels like her mom is walking right beside her throughout her trip.
Hadley, Lina’s mom, wants to surprise Matteo, her boyfriend at the time, by showing up in Rome. Twenty years later, Lina finds out that Matteo is her biological father and goes to Rome in hopes of finding him there. After meeting up with Matteo, Hadley states “I said good-bye to him in a normal voice, like I hadn’t just been shattered into a million pieces, then went to the counter and bought a return ticket on the very next train. I hadn’t even been to Rome for an hour. I never even got to wear my dress” (Welch 232-233). After Lina meets up with the same man, twenty years later, she feels the same way “I don’t know how long I cried for, but finally I felt my feet reach the bottom, my last few sobs coming out in