A New York Secret is a beautiful story of a girl borne into high society life working and dreaming as a Chef in New York City during WW2, showing class differences, cultural differences, and maybe above all, gender difficulties for women during that time period.

The author did an amazing job describing the scenes and giving life to being in a restaurant, the food and limitations that were placed on the city during the war. She portrayed the struggle of women working in a male-ruled world where, just because of your gender you had less opportunities, and were discriminated against before, during and immediately after the war. She also did a great job at pulling you in to the story and keeping you invested in the story and the characters.

The main reason for my lesser rating is that, while scenes and emotions were given great dimension in the story, the dialogue often felt one-dimensional. There was so much culture in NY and in the story that felt stripped and without character. There was almost no sense of what should have been a thick Italian accent or at least language and grammar threaded into many characters’ English being direct immigrants. It felt like they were normal multi-generational NYers and the richness was not present. At times the French in Vianne was there but none from the Morelli’s or any of the others we encounter. It was also odd when there was very old-fashioned conversation you’d expect from the 1800’s or early 1900’s (eg: “Dearest Nathanial”) from high society individuals and then extremely informal addressing of “mom” or “dad” from both those same people and from a direct Italian. It just wasn’t consistent or real for the period or culture.

Also on a lesser note it seemed like sometimes the characters flipped opinions and position really quickly after being so invested and described opposite. It felt a little jolting and abrupt.

Beyond that, I enjoyed the book and thought the content was terrific. Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my review.