Quick Synopsis

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.

Publisher’s Synopsis

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.

Book Review

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.

Rating

Did Not Finish