Loren, known as Lo, comes from a long line of psychic women who have visions of their soulmates before they meet. Her own mom died when she was young, and she’s never had a vision of her own until her freshman year of college. The image she sees confirms for her that she’ll meet her soulmate during a summer backpacking trip in Italy.

On her first stop, Venice, she is rescued from a runaway trolley by Caleb, and she’s sure he’s the one. But how does she get to know him without scaring him off with the news of her vision? And how does she reconcile being with Caleb when her feelings for her long-time best friend Teller, who is on the trip with her, seem to be growing? That’s what Lo has to find out in Something Like Fate by Amy Lea.

The book seems ripe for an adaptation to a rom-com movie, and all the plot points are there: a girl who misses her mom, her dad who doesn’t like to talk about the past, a guy who’s always been seen as a best friend who morphs from nerd to hottie after high school, and a new, exciting love interest.

There’s also the dreamy location. Lo spends time in Venice, Florence, Tuscany, Rome, and on the Amalfi Coast, retracing most of the stops her mom and aunt went to before she was born. Along the way, Lo finds things out from her family that she didn’t know about her mom, her aunts, her dad, and more. And Lo debates what it means to be with someone, and how relationships and affections can grow. Something Like Fate also gives a nod to movie rom-coms, with Lo and Teller quoting lines from the multiple films they have watched together as well as her expectations of “meet cute” scenarios.

While I would have preferred less detail about Lo’s life with Teller before their trip, sometimes her reflections last longer and cover more mundane details than I prefer, in general I thought the story was interesting and fun and provided a few twists that I didn’t see coming even though I guessed the eventual outcome.

The publisher provided a copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.