Winter With You A BRAND NEW escapist winter romance from Mandy Baggot for 2026

Gabriella Felix is from an upper family in England. After losing her sister she is now the legal guardian for her nice. She wrote a self help book and together they go on a promotion tour in New York. There she meets Luca Manning who is her stylist. When they get to know each other better they start seeing behind the masks they are wearing and discover it is time to talk about their wounds. Is the time right for new beginnings? I did not expect to have such tough topics in the book. So for me this book is not as romantic as I assumed it would be. Also it is set in December but there is not really a winter or Christmas feel to it for me. How grief is woven into this story, to read how they are coping or not coping with it was well done. Gabriella and Phoebe are handling differently the loss of Lulu and also they need to find out how their relationship shall proceed. This is well done. I really liked Phoebe. She lost her Mum when she was only 13 and yet 3 years later how she acts during the New York trip, how she talks to her aunt then is in my opinion the highlight of the book. Also I loved reading how Gabriella has talks with her dead sister Lulu. Then having Luca with his hard family story line what his Dad did and he can´t accept it also a hard story. And here it started to be a bit too much for me. That his family history is affecting all the persons close to him was a bit too many tough things brought into this story. So for me how Gabriella and Luca got to know each other, how their relationship changed with all the other stuff going on was something I could not enjoy as I was hoping for. Somehow I didn´t really feel their pull to each other. So who can handle books about depression, grief, emotional topics set with a love story and in big City like New York during wintertime will like this book. It took my some time to get into it, some things were a bit too much for my liking but overall this was a nice read.