Julie's Review: The Matzah Ball

Author: Jean Meltzer
Series: None
Publication Date:  September 28, 2021
Publisher: MIRA
Pages: 416
Obtained: publisher via NetGalley
Genre:  Contemporary Romance
Rating: 5/5
Bottom Line: LOVED IT. Lived up to all the hype
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt is a nice Jewish girl with a shameful secret: she loves Christmas. For a decade she’s hidden her career as a Christmas romance novelist from her family. Her talent has made her a bestseller even as her chronic illness has always kept the kind of love she writes about out of reach. But when her diversity-conscious publisher insists she write a Hanukkah romance, her well of inspiration suddenly runs dry. Hanukkah’s not magical. It’s not merry. It’s not Christmas. Desperate not to lose her contract, Rachel’s determined to find her muse at the Matzah Ball, a Jewish music celebration on the last night of Hanukkah, even if it means working with her summer camp archenemy—Jacob Greenberg. Though Rachel and Jacob haven’t seen each other since they were kids, their grudge still glows brighter than a menorah. But as they spend more time together, Rachel finds herself drawn to Hanukkah—and Jacob—in a way she never expected. Maybe this holiday of lights will be the spark she needed to set her heart ablaze.  ~amazon.com 

Review: The Matzah Ball had been getting a lot of rave reviews in a book group I'm part of, so I went ahead and read it. I am so glad I did. It is a wonderfully written book about living with a debilitating disease and wanting to be nothing but "normal".  Rachel hides secrets in her personal life and she hides them in her professional life. You see Rachel is Jewish and she writes Christmas Romance novels (under a pen name of course). It's important to know that Rachel's dad is a famous Rabbi known for his views on Jewish law. No one in her family or close knit community know that she writes these novels on the flipside no one in her professional life knows she suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. 

As Rachel goes in to renew her contract with her publisher, she's thrown for a loop; they want her to write a Hanukkah romance! She really doesn't know how to process this since Hanukkah doesn't have the same magic as Christmas. Little does she know that this request will send her life on a path that she wasn't expecting.

Enter her arch nemesis from camp, Jacob Greenberg and his biggest party yet, The Matzah Ball. Rachel figures this is the key to her being able to right a new book about Hanukkah. Of course, Rachel and Jacob have very different views of how things happened at camp when they were 12 and it definitely muddies the water with their opinions of each other. 

I loved that Ms. Meltzer wrote this from both Rachel and Jacob's points of view. It gives you insight to both of their experiences when they were younger and how that shaped their adult lives. 

I really truly enjoyed this novel and can't say enough about it. I don't typically do Holiday books but this is my first of a few this season. 

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