Love & Olives

September 1, 2020

Gr 7 Up-Welch, the author of Love & Gelato and Love & Luck, introduces readers to Greek American Liv, short for Olive, who is off to Santorini before her senior year of high school to see her father who wants her to help him find Atlantis. When Liv's dad left when she was eight, he left behind 26 items. Each chapter is introduced with a different item and what it meant to him. This creative touch allows readers to understand her father, despite his absence and obsession with the lost city of Atlantis. Liv is not only concerned for her dad but also for her boyfriend, Dax, and a young man, Theo, who she meets at her dad's bookstore. Liv has many adventures with her dad and grapples with feelings for Theo as well as Dax before she learns that the truth behind her dad's preoccupation with searching for Atlantis is much deeper than it appears. Boyfriend Dax is described as white; Theo's ethnicity is unspecified, though he is described as having skin darker than Liv's. VERDICT Readers who enjoy a light romance and adventurous travel will want to pick this one up.-Karen Alexander, Lake Fenton H.S., Linden, MI

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September 15, 2020
Recurring nightmares remind Olive--who has carved out a new, post-dad identity as Liv--about why she doesn't talk about her father anymore. The symbolism of dreaming about drowning while searching for the lost city of Atlantis, a mission her father, Nico Varanakis, has dedicated his life to, is impossible to ignore. His kitschy postcards, which suddenly started arriving two years ago, only make her feel worse. His latest is an invitation to visit him in Greece, and she is quick to decline. But at her mother's insistence that she try to reconnect with him, Liv finds herself in beautiful Santorini, joining her father's filmmaking crew and sharing a bunk in a bookstore with his assistant, Theo--a Greek teenager who charms her instantly. They are working on a documentary detailing Nico's Atlantean theories for National Geographic, an endeavor Liv finds both exciting and panic-inducing. Her recounting throughout of the 26 items her father left behind when he walked away from their family, and which Liv secreted in a shoebox under her bed, provides insight into his imprint on her memory, but their impending reconciliation requires a deeper dive and Liv has always stayed at the surface when it comes to Nico. The search for Atlantis and information about Greek philosophers add interest to the sweet, if at times predictable, story. There is a little diversity among the non-Greek supporting cast. A summery, romantic getaway. (Fiction. 12-16)

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