I really like Josie Silver. The Two Lives of Lydia Byrd is a favorite of mine. One Day in December, too.

I liked this story and the writing is very good. It drew me in. What kept bugging me was the title. It barely took place in winter! I felt like the title could’ve been something incorporating gelato or recipes.

Aside from that, it was cute. I liked the main character and the side characters.

Josie is a must read author for me, no matter what.

Oh my goodness, this book was so WONDERFUL. I’m still in tears after finishing the incredible audiobook, and I can safely say that A WINTER IN NEW YORK is one of my favorite books of the year! What a beautiful story about belonging and family and finding love after loss. Not to mention the iconic backdrop of NYC giving this story all of its magic! I absolutely loved it!

A Winter in New York (eARC) — 4 ⭐️

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐝 —
💗 Contemporary Romance
🥰 Feel-Good Story
🗽 Based in New York
🫶 Found Family
🔥 Slow Burn Romance
🍽 Foodie Inspired

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐢𝐟 —
🍨 Your favorite dessert is vanilla gelato
🧳 You’d move to a new place by yourself
🍜 You’re an expert in the kitchen
🎄 You prefer traditionally decorated Christmas trees
🎤 You enjoy singing, but only when you’re by yourself

𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰: Josie Silver knows how to warm my heart with her feel-good stories, and this one is no different. Her words are captivating, and I’m always learning new definitions with her use of vocabulary.

I grew attached to Iris and her wounded soul, and I couldn’t help but want to pull her into a big bear hug throughout this cozy, winter tale. While one of Iris’ main struggles included miscommunication which can be frustrating as a reader, I still found the story very enjoyable.

𝐓𝐖: cancer/sickness, verbal/emotional abuse, grief, sexual content

Thank you, NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, for providing me an eARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I loved One Day in December years ago, and was so excited to try her newest release!

I really liked the main characters Iris and especially our MMC Gio! Their connection felt really real and mature which was so nice to read in a romance. There was such great found family in this novel and handlings of grief and loss. It was so fun having the main plot surrounding gelato and a small family business.

While there was a lot I did enjoy about this book, there were a few things that left me feeling confused and wanting more from the story overall! There was soooo many secrets being kept from one another that did not feel necessary or really realistic. This is not a very holiday book IMO, but has a few scenes towards the end!

Overall I did like it, but it won’t be at the top of my books to recommend this holiday season! It was done well on audio though, and totally worth listening to in that format!

Iris Raven is a chef and NYC transplant from London, settling into the city that her free-spirited songstress mother Vivien fell in love with when she was younger. Her mom is gone now, she’s escaped an emotionally abusive relationship in London, and she’s working for her new best friend, Bobby (I adore him!), whose building she lives in and whose noodle shop she cooks for.

The entire story rests on this premise: Iris’s mother Vivien was in a band when she met Santo Belotti, the brother of one of her bandmates, Felipe. They fell hard and fast for each other over two days, inspiring Santo to give Vivien the one secret he treasured most: his family’s closely-guarded vanilla gelato recipe. He wanted to show her he trusted her and that she should choose a life with him. She chose potential musical stardom instead and their story ended with Viv chasing the stars and later getting pregnant by the band’s drummer. Was that the end?

Cut to the present, Iris discovers the Belotti gelateria one day where she meets Gio, who was raised by Santo. He tells her Santo has had a stroke and can’t remember the secret recipe and no one else seems to have it either. Iris realizes she’s the only one with the recipe that her mother handed down to her - only she decides she can’t tell Gio that, since she knows it would cause trouble for Santo if the family finds out he shared the recipe outside his family.

To make matters worse, Iris realizes she’d previously met Gio a year prior when they fought over the same book in a bookstore, leading her to desperately fabricate a sympathy story that her non-existent husband (i.e. abusive ex-boyfriend Adam) had died, only to find out Gio actually IS a widower, having lost his wife seven years ago. Eek. Will he recognize her?

He does, of course, and Iris’ mess of lies snowballs into a menacing threat to her and Gio’s passionate, but secret, new relationship as she becomes more enveloped into the Belotti family, including growing friendships with Gio’s sister Sophia and daughter Bella. Everyone loves her, including Santo’s wife Maria, who doesn’t know that Santo almost chose Iris’ mother over her all those years ago!

This is my first Josie Silver book, which I read on my Kindle while listening to the audiobook, beautifully narrated by Emma Appleton. She nailed the personalities and accents and made the book come alive! I loved Iris, the Belottis, Bobby and his husband Robin and Smirnoff the cat. The supportive family vibes made me want to move in with all of them! (Adopt me please.)

The story is fairly standard rom-com stuff: intense attraction, healing together from painful pasts, secrets and lies that threaten the relationship, the last minute “fix” of all the problems. My one big gripe is that the gelato recipe drama is a little hard to swallow - no pun intended! The explanation for all the secret-keeping just never felt justified and created a bit of an artificial crisis that I just had to go along with. I appreciated the messaging around Iris’ past abusive relationship and thought it was handled well, but I also didn’t think the dramatic reappearance of that character was necessary.

Putting aside issues of believability, which is fair because it’s a romance and that goes with the genre territory most of the time, it was a charming story with great character chemistry, a festive wintery NYC setting and a cast of characters that will steal your heart! The spice level isn’t too bad - just enough to melt your gelato a little bit. 😏 Speaking of gelato, I have to say that the mention of that and other amazing mouth-watering food was frequent enough that I might’ve put on weight just reading this!

I’m glad my first Josie Silver book was a good one, and I’ll definitely watch for more from her!

★★★★

This book is a gift. Josie Silver delivered a heartwarming, beautiful love story and a heart-rending story of alienation, abuse, & grief. To blend both seamlessly is more delicious than a bowl of just vanilla gelato. I fell in love with everyone in this story bar Adam Bronson. It is one of my favorite books of 2023 and cements Josie Silver as an auto buy author for me.

Josie Silvers is one of my all time favorite authors and the two lives of Lydia bird is one of my all-time favorite books. This was felt a little long and winding to me. I loved the family and friend relationships and the gelateria as the grounding of the story. The flashbacks and the recipe reveal I think would have been more powerful if I wasn’t clued in to what was happening as the reader off the bat. The stalker/abusive character showing up at the end felt like a bit too much to add to the third act.
I loved the connection of the main character with her mother and the way the secondary characters came to life was wonderfully done.

What a cute story. I was craving gelato! I really enjoyed the back story. I loved how it was intertwined. Sweet Christmas read.

It was cute but it was full of nonsense, really. Just give the man his damn family recipe, cripes sake! That "plot line" was tenuous at best. Definitely not Silver's best work.

This is a classic Josie Silver story. I felt the scenery and imagery, and gelato! So vividly. The characters had depth and mirrored real life. I would read anything she writes.

Like stepping into a Hallmark movie, this book will warm you up like hot cocoa in the winter. A light, easy read for your holiday TBR list.

Thank you NetGalley for the arc of this book (even though it came out two months ago)! I’m giving this 4.5 stars! Such a cute, happy, and heartwarming book. I loved all the characters and loved the setting in New York. Gio is such a sweetheart, as is the whole Belotti family. Iris has been through so much but is still such a strong, caring girl. I really really enjoyed this book! Would definitely recommend.

Iris, a recent new york transplant who fled an abusive relationship, ending up in NY retracing some of her late mother's footsteps, and Gio, a widowed shop owner in little Italy have a perfect valentines meet cute, in an enemies to lovers kind of way. Later in the year, she stumbles upon his gelataria, one she is sure was in an old picture of her mother's. Gio's uncle, the keeper of the secret family gelato recipe had recently had a stroke leaving Gio and his cousin unsure of how to continue making the famous gelato. Iris offers to help them work up to matching the recipe, with Gio and Iris falling in love along the way. But, plot twist, Iris's mother was a long lost love of Gio's uncle and he had actually written the recipe on a napkin that Iris was then in possession of.

Having enjoyed this author's previous novels, I knew that expecting a light hearted magical new york Christmas romance wasn't entirely in the cards but this was just a lot more than I had anticipated. I loved the scenery descriptions, I loved the found family aspect, I loved the flashbacks and the experimenting with the gelato. But the lack of honesty from Iris through literally the entire book rubbed me the wrong way. I understand being guarded due to her precious relationship but the big things that she was not upfront about, even to the point of the third act reconciliation felt like way too much to gloss over in the way that it was and foe me that really distracted from ehat the story could have been.

Like others have said, definitely have some gelato handy to enjoy while reading this one! (I personally gravitated towards the chocolate and vanilla bean swirl from trader Joe's, melt in the mouth delicious!)

Thank you Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC in exchange for my review!

One Day in December is my favorite holiday book so I was very excited to dive into this one! And I was not disappointed. It was a heartwarming story and gave the perfect mix of Hallmark movie vibes with emotion and depth . The MCs had great chemistry and Gio especially was so swoony. I loved the backstory with Iris’s mother, the meet cute in the beginning and the New York setting. A great pick for the holiday season. 4.5⭐️

Iris is in New York City, following a path to a new life. Along the way she meets a man and his vivacious family and falls in love. But Iris has secrets that she has been keeping…will they come to light and ruin her happy ever after?

Loved this book and found the characters to be extremely interesting and relatable. Would highly recommend this read.

If you are a fan of Josie Silver's previous books, you'll feel right at home with her latest "A Winter in New York". I enjoyed it, and felt like it was a nice winter read. While I thought it was a romance, it also had other elements such as found family and navigating grief that I think added a level of complexity to the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House - Ballentine for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

A fun book for December - a romance, set in New York City. Iris moves to NYC to escape a toxic relationship, and to try and start her new life in a city that her mom (now deceased) had loved. When she discovers a gelato shop that appears in one of her mother's scrapbooks, she is drawn inside. She meets Gio, the son of the owner who is now in the hospital, and cannot remember the family recipe. Of course, Iris has the recipe - her mom had a connection to the store from her early life, but Iris keeps that a secret. Iris starts her relationship with Gio with a few lies, which is always hard for me - no matter how noble she is trying to be. Of course, there is a happy ending. Filled with Italian family, secrets, music, and love, and of course, gelato.

Cute story, loved the family, loved the way they stepped up for her, loved the female empowerment and examples of healthy relationships without perfection. I want gelato now.

This is a heartwarming slow burn love story. It’s set in New York over the course of one year. I enjoyed the characters so much, especially the Belotti family. They are so close knit and take care of one another. Of course you must have gelato around when reading this as a gelato recipe is a big part of the story. I enjoyed this book very much.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random house for the copy for review.

Oh, my heart! A Winter in New York follows main character, Iris, as she tries to rebuild her life after the loss of her mother and leaving an abusive relationship. Enter the Belotti family, a lovable group of Italians who run a Gelateria in New York. They need help recreating their famous gelato recipe, which is where Iris becomes intertwined.
This story was so heartwarming! I was rooting for Iris the entire time, she is such a likable main character and her story will really pull on your heartstrings. I really enjoyed this story, it's not super Christmassy but it does have a holiday feel to it. I also had to go out and buy gelato while reading so be prepared!