A Winter in New York was a very cute contemporary romance. It's a charming, heartwarming and emotional story about love, grief, family and redemption around the holiday season.

I had mixed feelings about AWINY. I loved that it was a second chance at love romance between two 30somethings Iris and Gio both of whom had huge baggages; I loved the warm and cozy feeling the story had throughout; I loved the Belottis, Gio's big Italian family; and last but not least I loved all the gelato talk. I even loved Iris's character and I felt for her. But my girl Iris lied by omission and then dig herself deeper and deeper. She had several chances to come clean to Gio. While I could understand her motives and knew she didn't mean to hurt anyone, her character arc may not jive with many readers.

If you are in the mood for a good holiday book and enjoy found family trope this one fits the bill. It will also make you crave gelato.

From the cover and marketing blurbs I expected the book to be a lighthearted rom com. And while there was a romance, it is definitely not a rom com. Or even light hearted. It’s a book with real depth and emotions and an amazingly wonderful read. I suppose at its heart it’s a sad story but so intricate and multilayered. I grew to love the characters, especially Iris and Gio. I wish I could give the book a hundred stars, but I will settle for 5 and hope all of the readers love it as much as I did.

4.75⭐️

This book follows Iris about a year after her move to New York after leaving an abusive boyfriend. After her mothers death three years ago and leaving her abusive relationship, Iris decides to move to New York and follow in her mother's footsteps from over thirty years ago. When she discovers that her and her mother's gelato recipe is not only from the famous Bellotti's, where it is supposed to be a family secret, that the recipe has been forgotten after the patriarch, Santo, has suffered a stroke. Iris agrees to help his son, Gio, try to recreate the recipe, while also navigating the secrets she is holding back from him.

This book was nothing I expected to be. It reminded me a lot of One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle, as a lot of it is spent with Iris dealing with the grief of her mother passing. My only issue with this book was towards the beginning, it felt a little bit self-helpy, which drives me nuts, but it didn't go on too long which "saved it" for me.

I ADORED this book. It was absolutely wonderfully written and the story is so realistically complex that even though it is a romance, I was unsure how it would end. I waiting to read this ARC until the holidays, as I expected it for some reason to me more of a holiday romance, but it is not at all. The pacing of it all was great and I had such an amazing time reading this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Dell and Ballantine for the advanced copy of this book!

Josie Silver has become one of my must-read authors. This one started out a little bit slow but picked up and hooked me in. The chemistry between the two main characters was fire without being too smutty. The ending was wrapped up in a satisfying way and I loved it.

A stranger met in passing on a really bad day results in some shouted untruths…is there any coming back from those lies and a mysterious linked history once you realize that person may be the love of your life? 🤥

3.5 ⭐️ This one started so much stronger than I expected given the synopsis leans heavily on the gelato angle, which made me expect something cutesy. In fact, I thought the book started and ended strong, but it did drag in the middle for me. I liked our MMC, Gio, perhaps because this old reader appreciated a 39-year-old man who acted like an actual adult with realistic concerns and insecurities. I also liked the cast of secondary characters with Gio’s large extended family and our FMC’s upstairs neighbors/best friends. For me, the thing that dragged the book down was the fact that neither secret/lie felt like that big of a deal and our FMC, Iris, could have easily come clean early in the story. By not doing so, she was in this irksome situation of her own making and the whole book was building up to an inevitable third act confrontation. Also, the ex-boyfriend could easily have been an abstract background detail as I didn’t think his appearance added anything to the story other than pure cheesiness at the end.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for a complimentary advance copy of this eBook, out now.

This book was delightful. I appreciated its nuanced looks at family and parental grief. The love story was lovely, I loved getting to know all of the Belottis, and nothing has ever made vanilla gelato sound so appealing! A great addition to the love letter to New York canon. This was the perfect winter book!

thank you NetGalley and random house for an arc of this adorable novel. I love Josie Silver books and they always make me think of the holidays, which is why I decided to pick this one up around Christmas. I have to say if you read this book you need to have a pint of gelato close by because that’s all you will think about as you’re reading. I really enjoyed this story, however, I felt like it was about 70 pages too long. I would definitely recommend this one, but in the future think the author needs to wrap things up a little quicker.

This was a very cute story! I enjoyed the multiple plot lines and the connection between the families of the two main characters!

A very sweet read! Adored the characters and loved the storyline! 3 stars because it was a little detailed for me at times and I felt it drug on, but either way I enjoyed it!

Iris is a chef who has moved to NYC and is alone. When she meets Geo, she realizes that her mother's secret gelato recipe is Geo's family recipe that no one can recreate. But how did her mother get the secret recipe? Although Iris is drawn to Geo, will a lie that she told him when they met come back to haunt her? Or will gelato bring them together?

I have liked Josie Silver's books in the past, but as I read this one, I remembered how I struggled with her writing. It is just very, very slowly paced and I have a hard time getting on board with her characters. Something about her writing just doesn't fully work for me. So, after struggling thru this book for over two months, I find myself not caring to finish it. It is getting some good reviews, so I am glad others are connecting with it, as I did not.

i really like the meaning and the setting in this book! i think i wasn't exactly in the mood for it, hence my rating. it went by really slow for me and certain topics felt unfinished for me. i think this is a good winter book to read and for thos ewho like a sub-plot of romance and going on the journey of the main character finding herself!

Read for found family, NYC setting, family dynamics & legacy, Italian gelato, single parenting, self-discovery, opposites attract.
Iris has moved to New York to restart her life after getting out of an abusive and controlling relationship in London. She’s a chef and finds a job in a noodle house, with a flat upstairs and her new besties in the apartment above her. Bobby, her boss and friend, drags her to a street festival in Little Italy where she recognizes a scene from a picture in her scrapbook her mother left her.
The opening scene is perfection. As a book lover, it was everything I wanted! I won’t give any more away, but it really hooked me.

The middle of the book, with should I or shouldn’t I drama got a little repetitive and long for me, but I can see how it was necessary for the plot line when secrets are being kept.
This book had me in all the feels. I laughed, cried and felt the tension. Perfection!

TW: cancer, abusive relationship (past)

Thank you to Net Galley for this e copy of “A Winter in New York” by Josie Silver in exchange for a honest review.Having read all of Ms Silver’s previous books , I am happy to say this book does not disappoint.This is the story of Iris, a beautiful English singer running from her past and an evil boyfriend who has a chance encounter with Gio, an Italian-American gelato maker which goes badly.Fast forward to September when Iris sees the door to Gino’s shop and remembers it from her mother’s photos.What ensues is a tale of love, betrayal , and redemption.A must read for romance lovers.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free ebook ARC. This read like an edgy Hallmark movie. (Edgy because I don’t know if hallmark movies include abusive ex-boyfriends). Otherwise it’s a very self-aware rom-com, from the meet-cute to the big finale. It’s a perfect read for the holiday season. It also includes fun book club extras like discussion questions, a list of rom coms, and the gelato recipe, plus the inspiration for the story, if that’s your thing. Overall I very much enjoyed it!

Also I read the first half in 1 sitting, then life happened and the ebook access expired and o finally got it from the library 4 months later and finished it in 1 sitting. Maybe don’t be like me and just read the whole thing at once. But around Christmas time.

I liked this sweet little romcom even if its main character made some questionable decisions. Also, have gelato at the ready because this book will make ya crave it!

This was such a sweet comfort read. Girl meets boy after escaping her abusive ex boyfriend and running away to New York. She randomly sees a door from an old photo her mom had and goes inside. Where she meets hot gelato maker.

Thanks NetGalley for the E-Arc!!

I love books that take place in NYC and this one was so good! A fun, quick read that I couldn't put down.

2.5🌟 I loved Josie Silver’s first book — it was 5🌟 for me — but sadly none since have really measured up and this one I struggled to finish, skimming mostly, because the relationship was based on a series of lies. As such, the relationship just had no spark for me. Silver’s first book had compelling characters with interesting back stories. The rest of the books have been formula stories with a depressed (for various reasons) MCs who enter into a frothy new relationships. At a minimum, they were palate cleansers. But this one, with its lies-based plot, left a disappointing taste.

Did Not Finish

A Winter in New York is a holiday romance novel involving, you guessed it, gelato. After ending a toxic relationship, Iris decides to move to New York, thinking it would be the same as movies she watched with her mother. Through quite a bit of happenstance, Iris meets Gio, who is trying to save the family gelateria after his uncle has a stroke and can no longer remember the secret family recipe. Iris offers to help only to discover that their gelato tastes exactly like her mother’s secret recipe.⁣
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I started A Winter in New York hoping for a cute romance to put me in the holiday spirit. And I was not exactly impressed. The book starts out slow and continues at a glacial pace. Just when things seem like they are going to start happening, the narrative flips back in time to Iris’s mother’s time in New York. When I found out that the plot would be further delayed by this subplot, I put the novel down, hoping I would find more patience another day. Sadly, that day still has not arrived. Since I am unwilling to put myself into a slump to finish it, let me tell you why I closed the cover on this title.⁣
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Iris moved to NYC with absolutely no plan, no job, etc. which seems pretty unrealistic to me, more so when you find out she was living in London. No, just no. Even more ludicrously, she just so happens to land on her feet, finding a place in a building that boasts a restaurant & a landlord who becomes her bestie. That is not how things work here. Moving here by yourself is a special form of hazing. ⁣
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Add in the whole gelato disaster, and the story becomes more contrived than a typical romance novel. An entire business relies on a family recipe for the sole flavor of gelato they serve, yet they have no backup. Seriously? I feel like that stupidity is just asking for something to happen.

When Gio and Iris meet, chemistry is absent, and I had not fully come around to like Iris. So to add that I also had to read about her mother’s fling when I did not even care about her daughter yet. Nah. The cherry on top is that this book deals with grief & is heavy, which is not something I can handle right now nor what I want in a festive read.