One of the top books I've read this year. Great characters and introduction to a religious culture that I have very limited knowledge about. A great example that illustrates how representation is needed in romance novels.

From the moment I read the description of this book, I fell in love with it. It contained all of my insecurities in a beautifully festive package. I grew up Jewish, in love with the idea of Christmas but unable to actually enjoy it within my Jewish family unless I wanted to insult someone. I grew up sick, with a chronic invisible illness no one truly understood and even more people tried to dismiss with their own made-up solutions.

Read this book, I know it isn’t my story. I am not a romance novelist, I did not grow up the daughter of a rabbi or even regularly observe shabbat, but I did grow up in a culture where I felt loved and also restricted from enjoying things outside my heritage.

Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt is fantastic, but she also has a lot of trouble trusting people and letting go of the grudges she has held onto for years due to being hurt by others. I can relate.

From a romance perspective, this beautifully festive book contains party planning, secrets, pranking, enemies to romance, a second chance romance, an identity discovery, and a coming of age in its own way. It’s truly beautiful – and a phenomenal glimpse into an example of a Jewish upbringing.

This book felt like a Lifetime/Hallmark movie. I had a really hard time with the premise and reasoning behind the main character's love of Christmas as a Jew. I read the whole book, hoping to like it more but sadly, it just wasn't the right book for me. If you're looking for something light and beach-read/romance novel - then I think someone might enjoy the read. But I was not a fan.

The Matzah Ball is the book everyone is talking about right now, written by Jean Meltzer. This entertaining novel is hitting bookstores just in time for giving as a fun Hanukkah gift.

It is a fun, quirky and a little kooky plot that really does carry a deeper meaning. It brings to the forefront so much of the difficulty Jews have struggled with for centuries in America, though I hesitate to write the overused theme, “the December dilemma” this time for adults. It also looks at the

Rachel Rubinstein-Goldberg has grown up feeling the scrutiny of being the Rabbi’s daughter. Her mother is the Rabbetzin extraordinaire and Rachel has felt the pressure to always behave and appear as the proper role model. So when she decides that Christmas is a much more romantic, colorful holiday, she feels a need to keep her obsession secret. She earns her living writing Christmas romance novels under a pseudonym and collecting Christmas tchotchkes. She keeps this all hidden in her Upper East Side, New York apartment.

The only friend who knows her secrets is Mickey, a childhood friend. They have been friends since they were eight and even experienced Rachel’s greatest disappointment, when her first love at summer camp played a mean prank on her. She has never forgiven Jacob Greenberg for the embarrassment she remembers.

Jacob, of course, saw the incident differently and has held onto his feeling of abandonment all these years. When the now successful party planner comes back to New York to throw the biggest fundraiser party of his career, the extravaganza, Matzah Ball Max, their lives all cross paths again.

When Rachel’s editors tell Rachel she must write a Hanukkah romance this year and she decides to get a ticket to the Hanukkah soiree hoping to find the inspiration she needs to change her mind about the minor Jewish holiday not having enough magic to create a romance novel around.

Of course added to the misunderstanding of their childhood, Rachel and Jacob have to work through a few current disagreements, which brings us to the crux of the plot, girl meets boy, wonders if she can trust him, they argue, and it all leads to romance. Though along the way there is laughter, tension, suspense and the big finale..the eighth night of Hanukkah!

I love learning about Judaism (I am a Christian and have always been interested in learning and appreciating other Faith's and customs). This book was such a fun, entertaining on a glimpse into an observant Jewish person's life. Loved this aspect!

Loved learning about Hanukkah and Shabbat. The food descriptions made my mouth water!

I wholeheartedly want non-Christian holiday books to be very readily available and offered. This is a beautiful, necessary step in the right direction!

Learning about CFS was awesome and really eye opening. My heart really goes out to these silent sufferers.

I had a super hard time believing that 12 year olds fell in love and that impression stayed with them for 18 years. Possible, yes. Likely, no. I have an 11 year old and this part just seems real out there.

As a chronically ill person, I have a special place in my heart for books that accurately and kindly portray chronically ill characters. This is definitely one of those. I was not surprised to read in the author's note that Jean Meltzer has the same illness as her main character here - ME/CFS, known more frequently as chronic fatigue syndrome. Rachel, the main character, is the daughter of a famous Long Island Rabbi and has strong connections to her family and her Jewish faith and culture. But, she also has a secret - she's actually a best-selling Christmas romance novelist. Her publisher wants her to write a Hanukkah romance as her next book, and she slowly comes around to the idea when her first crush/first love/first heartbreak Jacob Greenberg is back in town to throw a very expensive Matzah Ball on the last night of Hanukkah. She gets involved with the ball preparation to get fodder for her novel, The Hanukkah Grinch. But of course, working closely together brings back old feelings for Rachel and Jacob and their working relationship gets a little complicated. Throughout all of this, Rachel is dealing with daily pain and fatigue from ME/CFS, and the unpredictability of the illness is portrayed so effectively. She has to take stock of her physical health before getting out of bed in the morning, she has to manage her energy, she has random pain and such serious fatigue that she often has to take prescription stimulants... and it was just all handled so well. I noted a ton of quotes from the book in my personal reading journal because they were so spot on in describing the physical, mental, and emotional toll of a chronic illness that I want to remember them forever.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin for an e-ARC of this book!

It's official. Jean Meltzer has my entire heart. I loved this book so much. Rachel was an amazing character and I not only loved the Jewish representation, but the invisible disability rep as well. I didn't realize until the author's note that the story was a reflection of Meltzer's own experiences. Back to the Judaism for a minute. I think this is one of the most openly Jewish romance novels I've ever read. Jacob's relationship with his Bubbe was everything to me. Even though Rachel loved Christmas, she was also a proud Jewish character. She kept kosher, went to Jewish summer camp, observed Shabbat and was actively practicing. The nod to camp and slight enemies to lovers was super fun. I honestly can't say enough good things about this book, it was just that good to me. I'm already excited for Meltzer's upcoming book!

This was really cute and nice to see some representation with a non-Christian holiday and a main character with a chronic illness. Some parts were a little ridiculous: they were only 12 at camp, the supposed master event planner was going to be hosting a terrible party. All in all, cute, but not something I'd put at the top of the list of recommended reading for my library's patrons.

This was a cute romance. It didn't grab my attention and there were some over-the-top themes that had to be accepted (get over it already!) but I enjoyed the book enough to give it 4 stars.

This is a delightful read that acknowledges the tropes (Rachel writes romances so she KNOWS) and turns them around a bit. Rachel, Jacob, and Mickey met at a Jewish summer camp and now 18 years later, Jacob, who has been living in Paris, is back in New York and bringing the Matzah Ball to life as a must-go event. Rachel's spent the last 18 years struggling with chronic fatigue but also succeeding as a writer of Christmas themed romances, something she hides from her family, especially her father the Rabbi. Now, her publisher wants her to write something fresh- a Hanukah romance. How to do it? Well, she reconnects with Jacob who makes a fool of her even as he yearns for her. He's got a sad backstory but a terrific bubbe. I know some have criticized this novel for a whole range of reasons (mostly the tropes) but take it for what it is- it's romance and it's different. Yes, Jacob is a creep to Rachel in spots but he's also good (and that's the whole point of the trope!). Rachel's chronic fatigue is critical to the plot and realistically portrayed (and yes, an editor could have cut a little of the repetition about this). Enjoy this for the characters - not just Rachel and Jacob but also Mickey, Bubbe, Rachel's mom, Shmuel, Martha and so on. The storytelling is good and while there aren't any real surprises, Meltzer does a good job of creating fresh twists. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. I'm a fan.

This is a cute romance set during Hanukkah. Overall I enjoyed it, but I have to say the plot seemed a little much at times. The two main characters were hung up on an event that took place at summer camp when they were twelve and in love with each other. That being said I appreciated the diversity, with the main characters being Jewish and one suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome. It is a solid debut, and I look forward to read Meltzer’s next book.

One Sentence Summary: PG second chance romance/hate to love romance set in a Hanukkah version of a Hallmark Christmas movie!

Reminds Me of: A Hallmark romance mixed with a Kasie West YA Romance with a healthy dose of Hanukkah.

Three Reasons You Should Read This:
1) It's just adorable and gave me the warm and fuzzies!
2) While this is definitely a "cheesy romance", it also touches on several hard-hitting topics. One of the most prominent being the theme of everyone being worthy of love and happiness.
3) Our main female character is living with a chronic illness (MS/CFS), something the author lives with as well, which is something not often included in romance novels!

One Thing You Should Know Before You Pick it Up:
There are a lot of Jewish references - words, foods, customs, etc - but you don't need have experience with Judaism to enjoy this book! I personally don't know much about Jewish culture and was able to keep up and understand most of the references based on Meltzer's writing. I really enjoyed reading and learning about Jewish culture in this adorable book!

I wanted to like this book, but I didn't. I just could not get past that two 30 year Olds were holding onto a grudge from something that happened when they were 12 at summer camp. And that they kept going on about how they were in love at the age of 12 and never got over it. It was just too far fetched for me to get past.

This one gets 4 stars not for the romance but for other aspects of the book. Jacob's sweet bubbe Toby gets all the stars. I loved her and her story. I also love, as a nonreligious person, how deeply considered the Judaism is in this book. Like it's a really interesting dilemma to me about whether it's okay halachically to be a Jew who writes romance novels.

The romance? Not so much. To say it's a slow burn isn't super accurate. The characters aren't really together enough for things to ever ignite. There wasn't a clearly depicted sense of desire. They have so much else going on. And Jacob just really never won me over. Post Fyre festival (which is referenced in the book) it's hard to imagine a party planner as a solid partner (and indeed he does need rescuing!), and I hate that he humiliated Rachel to try to get her to loosen up and have fun or whatever.

I also found their grudge from summer camp kind of embarrassing. They still cared about it as full adults? I try to honor the deeply felt emotions I had when I was a tween and teen, but also at some point you really need to laugh some stuff off and chalk some things up to youthful bad judgment.

I'm glad for a character with chronic illness to get to have a romance but I do think the beginning of this book suffered a bit from overexplaining both Judaism and chronic illness when it could have been getting me invested in the relationship. I wish it had been more "show don't tell" and trusted readers to seek out more knowledge if they needed it.

Rachel and Jacob haven't seen each other since they were kids at summer camp. Jacob was going through a rough time and Rachel was the light in his life, until one day that ended, she stood him up at the end of the season dance and he moved away to Paris never to be heard from again. Until now. He is back throwing the Matzah Ball Max and he would be lying to himself if he said he didn't want to see Rachel while he was in town.
Rachel has secrets. Lots of them. She's a Jewish woman obsessed with Christmas and writes Christmas novels under a pen name. Her dad is a rabbi and if he found out..ugh. When he publisher comes back to her and says they want a Hanukkah novel instead of her usual Christmas one and she desparately needs a ticket to the soldout Matzah Ball. The only way to get it is to confront the boy who betrayed her so long ago.
Jacob and Rachel have so many unresolved issues and I loved seeing how hung up on Rachel he still was after all these years. His first love that he never forgot.
Rachel has chronic health issues and is afraid no one will want her like that, even if she really does want to be with Jacob. She hides her illness because she doesn't want to appear weak. It is relatable. No one wants to feel open and exposed. I enjoyed their story, I love a good book about finding your soulmate over and over again.

This book was just as cute as the synopsis promised. I loved the characters and the storyline was so fun! This would make a perfect Hallmark movie, I was literally casting it in my head as I read it!!

I wanted a cute hallmark movie-esque book and this seemed to check the box! I'm not Jewish myself, so I cannot speak on the accuracy/cultural nuances of the story. However, this story was so cute! The perfect amount of cheesiness and a great ending. I just really enjoyed reading a non-Christmas holiday book.

I really enjoyed this sweet rom-com filled with Jewish spirit. I thought that the characters had a nice journey and their story was adorable. This book was read in a day, as it really out a smile on my face. I think readers will enjoy this heartwarming story that features great disability rep, Jewish rep, and makes you smile.

Heat Factor: Kisses in the snow
Character Chemistry: Soulmates, in the “you fill in my missing pieces” sense of the word
Plot: Rachel needs to write a Hanukkah romance and is feeling uninspired—so she tries to get a ticket to the Matzah Ball, a huge party being planned by none other than her first love.
Overall: I have very mixed feelings

The first thing that you should know about The Matzah Ball is that it is very very Jewish. This is not a criticism, merely a statement of fact. The characters, especially Rachel, are very immersed in Jewish life and the local community, to the point of insularity. (Rachel says to Jacob at one point that when she was a child, she thought the whole world was Jewish, because her whole world was.) It was a fascinating reading experience for me: my closest connection to Judaism is through my husband, who describes himself as “Jew…ish”, and his upbringing was even less Jewish than Jacob’s (which the book paints as barely on the edges of the community).

What does this mean? It means we get very earnest conversations about the meaning of everything, using Jewish tradition as a metaphor. For example:

She quieted, a small sadness sitting there at the tip of her throat. “But what I always explained to Jacob is that these candles are a metaphor. They remind us that we always have a choice. We can be someone who snuffs out another person’s candle and, in the process, makes the world a darker place. Or we can be the type of person who spreads light. Better to be the shamash— one candle that lights all the others and brightens an otherwise dark world.”

Anyways, if you’re interested in a very earnest depiction of people falling in love in the context of not-Orthodox but still very halachic Judaism, this is the book for you.

The second thing you should know about The Matzah Ball is that Rachel, the heroine, has chronic fatigue syndrome. (Meltzer also has CFS.) Because Rachel’s disease is all-encompassing for her life, her illness is all-encompassing in the text. There are extensive discussions—one could call them data-dumps—about what CFS is and what it means for Rachel’s day-to-day life.

There is a fine line to walk here, between giving the reader enough information to understand and empathize with Rachel’s situation and giving so much information that the story gets bogged down, and I don’t think Meltzer quite succeeded here. Take, for example, this aside about Rachel’s symptoms:

One of the hallmarks of chronic fatigue syndrome was something called PEM, or post-exertional malaise.
PEM meant that within twenty-four to forty-eight hours of physical or mental exertion, the symptoms of her disease would get worse. For Rachel, this meant the fatigue would go from manageable to intolerable. Her body would explode in a barrage of weirdo flu-like symptoms . Sore throats. Lowgrade fevers. Night sweats. Aching joints and migraines.

Is the gist of the information relevant? Yes, the reader should know that overexertion means that Rachel will pay for it extra in the future. But there’s a lot of info here—and I don’t need to know that the technical term is PEM, just the effect that it has on her life.

The third thing you should know about The Matzah Ball is that Jacob, the hero, is mean. He just is. His actions around the midpoint of the book made me deeply uncomfortable, and I never recovered any positive feelings for him.

A condition for Rachel getting a ticket to the Matzah Ball is that she volunteer for it. Now, since Rachel has a chronic illness, this is going to be extremely difficult for her, but she is determined to power through. Jacob decides that Rachel needs to loosen up, so he makes her a hideous matzah ball costume and puts her in charge of guest relations, doing tasks that are unnecessary, wasteful, and difficult to perform in an outfit where you can’t move your arms. He sees it as a harmless prank (like when they were kids and he pushed her in the lake and she put toothpaste in his sneakers) but: 1) I don’t like pranks in romances; 2) those pranks wouldn’t have been funny to 12-year-old me either; and 3) pulling a mean-spirited juvenile prank as a grown-ass man is just not a good look. This whole scenario, and the way both Rachel and Jacob handled it (and processed it after it became clear that it wasn’t funny for Rachel at all), really made me question these two as a couple. On the other hand, tween Jacob and Rachel both thought that toothpaste in the sneakers was friggin’ hilarious so maybe those who like romance pranks will find Jacob’s actions less distasteful.

The fourth and final thing you should know about The Matzah Ball is that this is a Hanukkah romance about a romance author coming to terms with her identity in order to write a Hanukkah romance. Fun and metatextual, but the publishing schedule seemed completely wack. I do work in publishing, but not for a big fiction outfit, so maybe I’m just wrong, but going from proposal and three-chapter sample to contract to wanting to get the whole book into production during the eight nights of Hanukkah seemed way too fast. I guess the timeline was for plot purposes, because we need to make Rachel’s life as stressful as possible, so just…don’t think about it too hard.

I wanted to love this book, because the premise is fun (Second chance romance! Romance novels about romance novelists! Discovering the magic of Hanukkah!). I did love individual pieces: some of the humor is spot on, and I found Rachel’s obsessive adoration of Christmas pretty charming, and her angst about living multiple secret lives felt very earned. But as a whole, it didn’t end up really working for me.



I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We disclose this in accordance with 16 CFR §255.

This review is also available at The Smut Report.

Well this book was absolutely delightful. I believe this was the first Hanukkah romance I ever read. Loved all these characters especially Bubbe!