Love You a Latke by Amanda Elliot
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Love comes home for the challah-days in this sparkling romance.
Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. For one thing, her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning with his sunshiny attitude, determined to break down her carefully constructed emotional walls. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby's been charged with planning their fledgling Hanukkah festival. Unfortunately, the local vendors don’t understand that the story of Hanukkah cannot be told with light-up plastic figures from the Nativity scene, even if the Three Wise Men wear yarmulkes.
Desperate for support, Abby puts out a call for help online and discovers she was wrong about being the only Jew within a hundred miles. There's one Seth.
As it turns out, Seth’s parents have been badgering him to bring a Nice Jewish Girlfriend home to New York City for Hanukkah, and if Abby can survive his incessant, irritatingly handsome smiles, he’ll introduce her to all the vendors she needs to make the festival a success. But over latkes, doughnuts, and winter adventures in Manhattan, Abby begins to realize that her fake boyfriend and his family might just be igniting a flame in her own guarded heart.

My Review:

It may be “beginning to look a lot like Christmas” – but it’s beginning to look a lot like Hanukkah, too. Particularly this year, as Hanukkah begins on the evening of December 25, 2024 – yes, that’s Christmas Day – and ends at sunset on Thursday January 2, 2025.

Hanukkah is not “late” this year – or in any other year. It’s EXACTLY when it’s supposed to be, the 25th day of the month of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar – which is a LUNAR calendar based on the phases of the moon with a bit of a fudge factor to keep the months in line with the seasons of the solar year. The secular calendar, otherwise known as the Gregorian calendar, is a SOLAR calendar, based on the Earth’s orbit around the sun – with its own bit of fudge factor (leap years with leap days) to keep months lined up with the seasons. They aren’t the same.

And this is just the kind of thing that Abby Cohen finds herself attempting to explain – a LOT – as the only Jewish small business owner in her tiny town in Vermont. The one who has been voluntold that she’ll be planning a Hanukkah Festival/Market in less than a month, in the hopes of helping the town to stand out a little in the midst of the more ‘traditional’ Holiday Markets – meaning Christmas – in the neighboring towns. Even though the planned date for the ‘Hanukkah Festival’ is going to miss the actual holiday by more than a bit.

Abby’s coffee/pastry/lunch place isn’t doing well, financially – and neither are any of the other shops on the town’s Main Street. They ALL need a boost. The idea for the Hanukkah Festival isn’t bad – it’s just that the head of the town’s business association is a real steamroller who really wants a traditional holiday market but recognizes the market – ahem, so to speak – is saturated.

And who both doesn’t want to do all the work involved in any festival AND is most likely planning on using Abby as a scapegoat when people complain – either that the festival is too Jewish – or much more likely considering Lorna’s plans for the Festival – not nearly Jewish enough.

A problem that Abby is already having plenty of trouble with herself. She’s disconnected herself from the Jewish community in general – and from her parents in particular – for reasons that are far from apparent as the story begins.

But it’s clear she’s running away from something – or someone, or her own feelings about one or the other – and this little town in Vermont is far enough from her native New York City to be an escape from whatever trouble she left behind. Even if she brought the trauma of it with her.

Which is where her best and possibly least favorite customer comes in – and helps her out. Seth’s not a bad or troublesome customer in any single way. It’s just that he’s an effusive, cheerful, morning person – annoying so – and Abby is neither. He seems a bit of a pollyanna, always seeing the brighter side of everything – while Abby sees all the glasses, and cups, and plates, as half full AT BEST.

A best she is never, NEVER at first thing in the morning. (As a fellow non-morning person, I feel for her. Seriously. Morning people are TERRIBLE and need to stay far, far away – and be quiet about it – until after serious applications of caffeine.)

But Seth turns out to be the only other Jewish person in town. And he has a brilliant idea. A way they can help each other. Abby needs to go to New York City – in spite of just how much the very thought of running into anyone from her past gives her the heebie-jeebies – to find vendors willing to come for the festival.

And Seth needs to bring a nice Jewish girl home to his parents for Hanukkah in just a few short days. If Abby is willing to fake a relationship for the eight days of Hanukkah, Seth will help her make all the connections she needs to make the festival a success.

What could go wrong? Everything. What could go right? EVERYTHING!

Escape Rating A-: This is the second book in my personal participation in the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. If you are playing along with my Holiday Bingo Challenge, Love You a Latke checks off the box for either “Other Winter Romance” or “Seasonal but not Xmas” as well as “Snow on the Cover” but you’ll have to pick just one. I was specifically looking for a holiday romance centered around Hanukkah instead of Christmas because there just aren’t as many of those as I’d like to see.

Like Abby in the story, I often get just a bit annoyed that saying “holiday” this time of year is simply a coded way of saying “Christmas” that doesn’t acknowledge any of the MANY other holidays that are celebrated this time of year.

And a part of this story is Abby pushing back against that nearly overwhelming tide. The organizer wants to have her cake and eat it too, a “Holiday” Festival that’s labeled as Hanukkah so it stands out but is really Christmas after all. I was a bit astonished that Abby never thinks that Lorna isn’t getting kickbacks or trading favors with all of the ‘friends’ she expects Abby to hire to work on the festival she doesn’t want to plan and carry out herself.

But maybe I have a more suspicious nature than Abby does.

I’ll get down off my soapbox now – or at least I’ll try. Because the heart of this story is, of course, the will they/won’t they/can they/should they fake romance between Seth and Abby. Fake relationship romances are always so much fun because of the tension between what the couple is pretending to be versus what they think they really are and how easy the fake becomes real.

And that oh-so-very-much worked between Abby and Seth. Because his mother, as much as she is meddling, is actually right. Abby and Seth belong together because they make each other better people through challenging each other to be their best and most honest selves.

But the soul of the story is Abby’s internal conflict – and did I ever feel for her in that. She grew up in a close-knit Jewish community in New York City – a community that she loved BUT that she couldn’t really trust because her parents were lying, gaslighting, abusive assholes, and they poisoned everyone against her to make themselves look like perfect parents.

So she’s lost touch with her roots because it felt like the only way to excise the cancer in her soul. She misses being a part of the community so much, of being in on the jokes and sharing the history and all of what makes it a comfort to be among one’s own people no matter how that group is defined.

And she’s afraid of it at the same time because her parents have poisoned it for her and she fears – not unreasonably – that if she trusts anyone with her true self, with her fears and weaknesses and hopes and dreams – that they will either weaponize her feelings against her or betray her to her parents and their clique – or both. Letting Seth in AT ALL, even just as a friend, is a HUGE leap for her – and it’s so understandable that she very nearly doesn’t make it.

I felt SO MUCH for Abby’s journey. Both her disconnect and her need and desire to reconnect. But I kept waiting for her confrontation with her parents. She needed it and so did I as the reader. It felt like she couldn’t really have a happy ever after until at least some of that boil got lanced – no matter how painful THAT operation might be.

But I’m not sure it did. And I’m caught on the horns of a dilemma about that because the way it went felt more real. Not satisfying, because I was hoping for a big blowup and a huge catharsis – and that’s not how life works. Which is honestly a pity, but that’s the way things go.

I think the question for readers – and it’s the one I’m still puzzling over – is whether the way it does go is enough for Abby to start healing. In the end, I think so. I hope so. But I’d still love to have seen some just desserts get served.