REVIEW: A Winter in New York by Josie Silver

In A Winter in New York by Josie Silver, When Iris was leaving her bad situation behind in London to start over again in New York City, she knew there would be some hiccups at first. But she didn’t expect to feel so heartbroken over the recent loss of her mother while traversing the same noisy streets her mum told her about for so many years. Iris is lucky to quickly find a job, a place to live, and even more so, to meet her landlord Bobby who is like the brother she always wished for. It’s when she notices the storefront of a gelateria while at a food festival that everything changes. Because that same old-fashioned door featuring Belotti’s famous scrawl is in Iris’s mother’s scrapbook. And she’s pretty sure that’s where the vanilla gelato recipe that features in so many of her memories came from.

‘I stepped through that glass door and tumbled into the Belotti universe, a place so seductive and all-encompassing that I’m finding it almost impossible to walk back out of the door for good.’

One trip to Belotti’s later and Iris, a trained chef, confirms her mum’s recipe and the famous gelateria’s are one and the same. Unsure what to do with this knowledge, she soon finds herself offering assistance to handsome Gio who explains how his uncle Santo has had a stroke–and no one else in the family knows the recipe. Iris can’t idly sit by and watch Belotti’s shut down. But working so closely with Gio on recreating the recipe while not being fully honest about her reason for being there in the first place wreaks havoc on her conscience. Then Santo returns home. And things get even more complicated. Once the truth is out there about Iris’s mum having the recipe and how Santo plays into it, it threatens to shatter everything good Iris now has in her life.

‘He values honesty and loyalty above all. I’ve compromised both of those things to be with him and, once he knows, I don’t think there’s going to be any more to our story.’

Josie Silver’s knack for putting her lovable characters in complex, seemingly no-win situations (thankfully) continued with A WINTER IN NEW YORK–a heartfelt story about starting fresh while holding the past and family traditions close to the heart.

‘I know there’s a world out there where he and I could make each other happy.’

CW: View Spoiler »Controlling & emotionally abusive relationship, stalking, grief (loss of parent, loss of spouse), anxiety. « Hide Spoiler

Every time I’ve read a Josie Silver novel, I swear I’ve thought to myself, “There’s no way this will work out for the characters”. But I’m happy to say that A WINTER IN NEW YORK, just like her other books, ended on a great note and with much laughter, tears, and happy sighs. Mainly told from our heroine Iris’s POV, we also got a few flashback passages from her mother Vivien and our hero Gio’s uncle Santo’s POVs during the mid-eighties in NYC. And oh, what depth it brought to an already emotional story. Those perspectives really showed why it was so complicated when Iris’s world became tangled up with the Belotti family present day, plus will leave readers thinking about fate and whether things happen for a reason.

I’m admittedly not a huge fan of lies of omission in romances. However, Josie Silver’s use of this element in Iris and Gio’s story had a purpose that made sense and wasn’t taken lightly. It was something Iris agonized over again and again. And even though it was easy–for her and for us readers–to see the train wreck up ahead, I had to give her kudos for protecting her mother’s secret regarding the gelato recipe’s origins at all costs.

Iris had been through a horrible time before moving to NYC. In London, she left behind her career as a chef, a terrible ex-boyfriend, and the loss of her beloved mother Vivien. But Iris was a strong woman, even if she didn’t believe she was at times. I absolutely adored the friends who rallied around her while she started over, particularly her landlords Bobby and Robin. They brought all the feels back to Iris’s life. And once she also became entrenched in the Belotti family, love and joy were the overriding emotions–outweighing the sadder parts of her recent past. Gio was the main reason for the upturn in Iris’s days. And with a steady, loving, genuine-hearted guy like him in her corner, how could theirs be anything but a stunning HEA?

QOTD: Do you have any family recipes or family traditions involving food you enjoy?

Book Info:

Publication: Published: October 3rd, 2023 | Dell |

A young chef stumbles on a secret family recipe that might lead her to the love—and life—she’s been looking for in this stunning novel from the New York Times bestselling author of One Day in December .

When Iris decides to move to New York to restart her life, she realizes she underestimated how big the Big Apple really is—all the nostalgic movies set in New York she’d watched with her mom while eating their special secret-recipe gelato didn’t quite do it justice.

But Bobby, Iris’s best friend, isn’t about to let her hide away. He drags her to a famous autumn street fair in Little Italy, and as they walk through the food stalls, a little family-run gelateria catches her eye—could it be the same shop that’s in an old photo of her mother’s?

Curious, Iris returns the next day and meets the handsome Gio, who tells her that the shop is in danger of closing. His uncle, sole keeper of their family’s gelato recipe, is in a coma, so they can’t make more. When Iris samples the last remaining batch, she realizes that their gelato and her gelato are one and the same. But how can she tell them she knows their secret recipe when she’s not sure why Gio’s uncle gave it to her mother in the first place?

Iris offers her services as a chef to help them re-create the flavor and finds herself falling for Gio and his family. But when Gio’s uncle finally wakes up, all of the secrets Iris has been keeping threaten to ruin the new life—and new love—she’s been building all winter long.