Love and Luck – Jenna Evans Welch

Did you know that each leaf on a clover stands for something? … Faith, hope, and love. And should you happen to find one with four leaves? Well, that’s the one that stands for luck. So, my love, I wish you all those things. Faith, hope, love and luck. But mostly I wish you love. It’s its own form of luck.

I read Jenna Evan Welch’s first novel, Love & Gelato, last year and adored it. So, when I finally got to read Love & Luck I was expecting something very similar. But this book was not at all what I expected: it was better.

I’ll tell you why. I don’t think that I have a cold heart (well not all the time), but I generally just put up with the cutesy romance sections of most contemporary YA fiction. I understand that you have to give people what they want (and a lot of people WANT that romance) but if kissing is the only thing a book has going for it, I don’t think it is a very good book.

Now bring on Love & Luck. There is so much more actual love in this book then most contemporary YA but I’ll warn you right now – there isn’t a lot of kissing. The love is about family, friendships and perhaps most importantly – loving yourself.

Set this against a gorgeous Irish backdrop, throw in Welch’s extremely playful sense of humor and a bad-ass main character who full-on tackles her quarter-back brother and knows how to fix cars (while the boys sit back and watch), and you have this wonderful coming of age story.

Addie is visiting Ireland for her aunt’s over-the-top destination wedding, and hoping she can stop thinking about the one horrible thing she did that left her miserable and heartbroken—and threatens her future. Miserable, Addie can’t wait to visit her friend in Italy and leave her brother—and her problems—behind.

And then their travel plans change. Suddenly Addie finds herself on a whirlwind tour of the Emerald Isle, trapped in the world’s smallest vehicle with her brother Ian and his admittedly cute, Irish-accented friend Rowan. As the trio journeys over breathtaking green hills, past countless castles, and through a number of fairy-tale forests, Addie hopes to heal not only her broken heart, but also her shattered relationship with her brother.

That is if they don’t get completely lost along the way.

4.5 Spades