Love You a Latke

• Author: Amanda Elliot
• Genre: Romance
• Publication Date: October 8, 2024
• Publisher: Berkley

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the fall! Although it took me a little longer than planned to get to it, I was determined to finish this book in December. So I grabbed my kindle and flew through this one. Mainly because it was so good that I couldn’t put it down.

I quickly realized that this book came with some of my favorite tropes—grumpy/sunshine (she’s the grump), fake dating, enemies to lovers, and only one bed. And I was thrilled with the idea of reading a Hanukkah romance this month, featuring Abby, the one Jewish person on the tourism board, being put in charge of planning a Hanukkah festival. The rationale is a good one: too many Christmas markets in the area, and the novelty of hosting a Hanukkah festival in hopes of bringing more tourism to their sleepy town. 

However, Abby is fighting an uphill battle trying to explain Hanukkah to the rest of the vendors, who keep trying to shoehorn Christmas into a Hanukkah festival, and the two holidays are fundamentally different. In desperation, she casts a wide net to see if she can find any other Jews in the area. And finds exactly one: Seth, the most optimistic cafe customer she has. Of course, he’s the one who consistently grates against her nerves with his overwhelming sunshine. And they obviously strike a deal—he will introduce her to all the vendors she needs for the festival if she joins him as his ‘Nice Jewish Girlfriend’ for Hanukkah with his parents.

The tropes are done beautifully in this story. The enemies-to-lovers fake dating was something I really enjoy, and I especially loved the amount of Jewish representation in this book. Abby moved to Vermont for a relationship, fell in love with the place, and decided to stay. She isn’t exactly connected to her Judaism, but she wholeheartedly embraces the idea of a Hanukkah festival and has a pretty solid understanding of the holiday and her own culture. However, as the grouch that she is, she doesn’t exactly have a lot of holiday cheer to spread around. It doesn’t help that she constantly has to explain to people that Hanukkah is not a Jewish version of Christmas. 

There’s clearly some kind of connection between Abby and Seth, especially since she gets so irritated by him and his constant cheer. Abby is really grumpy at first, to the point where her ever-present negativity became grating. But I had faith that she’d come around, and I wasn’t wrong. Despite her irritation with Seth, once they get into the fake dating portion of the book, they start to have fun with each other and get to know more about themselves and each other.

My personal version of catnip is seeing characters grow in a story, even if it’s a cozy read like this one. It wasn’t long before we started to see more of Abby’s and Seth’s unresolved issues and learn more about who they really are underneath the persona that they project. Abby shows phenomenal growth in this story—opening up about her childhood trauma, reconnecting to her faith and heritage, and becoming vulnerable, although I would have liked to see more growth in Seth, who is such a nice guy that he struggles to be direct. This leads to the appearance of one of my least favorite tropes in a book, miscommunication. I had a hard time with both of them about this—Abby is so caught up in her own negative thinking spiral that she misses plenty of hints that his feelings might actually be genuine, and Seth really has a hard time speaking up for himself.

Although this is a really cozy, low-stakes, closed-door romance, there are much deeper themes in the story. There’s the constant microaggressions that Abby confronts, always having to explain what the holiday is, how it is celebrated, and that no, Hanukkah bushes aren’t actually a thing. There’s Abby’s childhood trauma, which leads to her currently having such high walls around herself. But what I loved especially hard was the way that not only did Abby learn more about who she is by opening up, she also found her way back to Judaism. This leans into the Jewish belief that a Jewish soul (neshama) will always find its way home to Judaism, whether that involves reconnecting with Judaism or going through the conversion process, along with the way that there really isn’t any wrong way to practice Judaism (other than converting to another religion). The representation might not be exactly how you practice, but it allows people to see inside such a small group of people around the world, where so many people have never met a single Jew. It also reinforces the fact that despite all of the differences between Jews around the world, we can all find some level of commonality—and one of those things is how Hanukkah symbolizes the light we have to offer, and the reminder that the light of a single candle is never diminished by sharing it with another, it only grows.

It’s basically a love letter to Hanukkah, NYC, and family traditions. I loved how Elliot managed to write the story around the Jewishness, as opposed to the other way around. The plot was a smooth one that I really enjoyed, but the thing I loved the most about this book was watching Abby grow. I would have liked to see more of Abby and Seth falling for each other, although the fact that they see each other daily breeds some familiarity. I have to mention the funny little Jewish references that are explained beautifully and succinctly, like what ‘Jewish Geography’ is and how any two Jewish people who come into contact will inevitably have at least a little common ground, and often discover people that you’re both already connected to.  Seth’s parents were hands-down my favorite characters, with their quirks and hilarity. It felt so natural, like I was spending time with my own NY Jewish family, and I’ll forever be a sucker for books that have me seeing myself within their pages. This is an easy add to your TBR if you like the tropes mentioned above, are looking to learn a bit more about Hanukkah traditions, love reading books set in NYC (with fun winter activities), or just love a good holiday romance.

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