A Winter in New York

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!

★★★★ 

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, NetGalley and author Josie Silver for the DRC to honestly review, and to my local library/Libby for the audiobook. It’s out now.