A Time for Everything
by Brona Mills
Romance, Time Travel
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When Michael turns twenty years old, he’s visited by a mysterious woman who changes his life forever.
Part fairy godmother, part guardian angel, Audrey is a time-traveller who has come to change Michael’s life for the better. Imagine if you knew the future, if you knew what would make people better and what would make your life into what you wanted.
Would you take it if you knew there were consequences to it?
I’m going to level with you right now. My first instinct was to call shout from the heavens that I’ve found Eat, Pray, Love for young adults, but… I haven’t read Eat, Pray, Love and I only have the loosest idea of what it’s all about (I do know that Julia Roberts was in the movie though, so that’s something). So let’s not be disingenuous or misleading and instead look at Love & Gelato it’s own merits.
The title is apt and I guess what I wasn’t expecting out of this was the interesting dynamic between all the main characters. Normally parents in young adult novels play strictly supporting roles. They’re there to smile, help out, and then possibly die when the stakes need to be ramped up in a hurry.
Not so with Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch. Kind of… It’s complicated.
From the very beginning of this novel, I was thrown off. Although this is set in the 15th century, the very first sentence threw me out of the book:
“The hammering on the door shot him into wakefulness like a handgun going off in his face.”
I had to put the novel down and go to Wikipedia, determined to find out the truth of the matter and grow about my own superior knowledge. I skimmed some of the entry and then happened upon this small paragraph in the handguns entry:
Handheld firearms first appeared in China where gunpowder was first developed. They were hand cannons (although they were not necessarily fired from the hand, but rather at the end of a handle). By the 14th century, they existed in Europe as well.
You win this round, Philippa Gregory.