We get to experience Penina’s awkward dates as she is now too old for the best matches and unfortunately she has a condition that would make it impossible for her to carry a child (Be aware if that is a trigger for you). I only mention the trigger since she is pretty hard on herself and her view of her worth because of it in her community. But as she grows and makes some decisions that are more sacrificial to save her family she realizes that she is worthy of more than she was expecting of life. Not all doors are closed when you get bad news. You can still be a parent even if you have fertility struggles (watching the last season of Ted Lasso and keep telling my husband this).
There was a bit of miscommunication as things seemed a certain way but they really weren’t. Feelings got hurt when she thought he was done but he was just prepping his grand gesture. Which was a thoughtful and meaningful gesture! Also, loved the way that she ended up getting her chance at a family. That's the best case scenario all around. Maybe spoiler idk.
It is great to see rep from the Jewish community that is more Orthodox than Reform. There is so much more than the awesome food and vocabulary there are also rules that they live by to protect themselves and their reputations and their hearts and souls.

Thank you alcove press for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

I adored this story. Pennia is a trip, and I love her. Her inner dialogue was spectacular, but Pennia is a sweetheart with a big heart. She cares about her family so much she is willing to put herself lst at all times.

Pennia has had difficulty being as she can't have kids, although she puts up a good front. Meanwhile, she has serious feelings for Sam, but he isn't Unorthodox.

But she is getting married so she can't think of Sam - she needs to get married to help her sister - it won't be that bad.

I devoured this book and loved it.

2.5 stars rounded up. Thank you to NetGalley and Alcove Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I’ll preface this review by saying I am a reform Jew. While I think Unorthodox Love had potential, it had a lot of not only Jewish stereotypes but just didn’t portray the Jewish community as a whole in the best way. As someone who had knowledge about most of the Jewish topics in this book, I could see how they may come off as hard to swallow for non or less-religious readers. But, that aside, I enjoyed some aspects of the story. There were many funny moments that made me laugh, and some that were heartfelt. However, I found the multiple plot points going on a little difficult to swallow, a lot of overdramatic aspects that were just *too* much, and just a lot of outlandish/ridiculous moments that ultimately didn’t deliver. The end was also super meh for me. I probably wouldn’t read another book by this author.

As a Jew, it is always refreshing to see Jewish main characters in contemporary books. It is even more refreshing to see a modern Orthodox family that is mostly neglected in fiction books. While there were parts of this story I enjoyed, at times I felt like I was almost reading an incomplete story.

Penina was represented well at times of almost living a sheltered life. But at the same time, I felt like I was reading a YA story with her thoughts and actions. I think the story could’ve benefitted from dual perspectives or a few chapters from Sam, especially towards the end. I also would’ve loved for the end to have been fleshed out a little more since it felt extremely rushed.

When I opened, Unorthodox Love, I was not ready for the cackling and heart eyes that would commence! This book was an immediate 5 stars for me with the opening incident between our FMC and MMC (iykyk.) Heidi’s writing was humorous in a way that I found parts of my own romantic story in Penina’s. Penina was funny and relatable even with her taboo “barren womb” in the Orthodox Judaism culture she was trying to appease. Sam Kleinfeld was just what we needed in a MMC and I adored him!

I appreciated Heidi’s take on religion, relationships, and how we view ourselves. Sam and Penina’s story reminds us that we are only lacking things in our life if WE choose to see them that way. No one else, no religion, no structure, no system can assign our worth and value to ourselves or another. Bravo, Heidi on a job well done!

Thank you, Netgalley for an opportunity to read a free advance reader copy of Unorthodox Love. I leave my honest review willingly and in support of an amazing book!

I absolutely love seeing underrepresented people as the main character. I was so grateful that the author chose to write this love story about a 29 year woman who is Orthodox Jewish & infertile. I love learning & reading about things & lives I don’t know enough about. This book taught me a lot & showcased a beautiful family to experience.

I felt like a lot of the story hinged on miscommunication & lack of communication, which is my least favorite trope. So I ended up with mixed feelings at the story. But as a whole, I appreciated the representation.

Massive thanks to NetGalley & Alcove Press for the gifted arc, which I voluntarily read & reviewed.

It pains me to say that I was very disappointed in this book. Ordinarily I love a good romance/rom-com, especially one with Jewish characters, but this truly disappointed.

Positives: fun fashion-related quotes at the beginning of each chapter; frank talk about infertility; positive representation of Orthodox Judaism; funny descriptions of bad dates; Zevi’s mother; the Minneapolis setting.

Negatives: the two main characters! Penina is 29 and is not only a virgin, but she has never even been kissed by a man, because of her traditional Orthodox upbringing - the result seems to be that she obsesses over men’s physical characteristics (to put it nicely). She is, in short, horny. Sam is the love interest, but his personality wasn’t attractive at all. There are a couple of scenes where Sam and Penina (she works in a jewelry store where he is the new owner/manager) go to a competitor’s jewelry store to scout them out and the way Sam behaves on their way to the store is incredibly rude - and this is while Penina is being kind and trying to help an older woman who seems lost in the parking garage.

I bounced between the audiobook and the ebook for this title, which was very convenient. However, once I realized there were obvious differences between them, I stuck with the audiobook because it was the more recent of the two. The audiobook narrator spoiled the book further for me. At 1.0 speed, the narration was incredibly slow, so I sped it up quite a bit. The worst part was that the narrator mispronounced words: common English-language words like “urinal” and “rabid”, plus fairly common Yiddish words like “challah”, which is almost an English-language word at this point. No, you do not pronounce “challah” with the “ch” as in “church”! She also did a very bad Israeli accent for one of the minor characters. So 2 stars for the audiobook and 3 for the story.

Thank you to Alcove Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy of this book and to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this audiobook. All opinions are my own.

*2.5

This wasn't the worst but it could have been better. I liked that he was learning about her religion and trying to understand her beliefs. I really did not understand why she felt like she needed to marry Zevi. If the book focused more on her and Sam I think it would have been immensely better.

I received an arc through netgalley.

My heart always does a flip whenever I see Jewish books on NetGalley. It’s even better when I have time in my reading schedule for them. I requested Unorthodox Love by Heidi Shertok (Alcove Press, 2023) as soon as I spotted it, and then waited. And waited. And waited. And when I was finally approved, of course I already had a stack of books I needed to get to first! Such is the way of a reader’s life. But when I was finally able to dive in, I discovered a read that had been worth the wait.

At twenty-nine and unmarried in a community where young women most often get married by their early twenties, Penina Kalish is practically geriatric in the Orthodox world. A medical condition ensures that she’ll never have children, and as this is something extremely important to Orthodox Jews, Penina knows she’s damaged goods and unlikely to find a husband. The dates she does go on, set up by a feisty but out-of-touch matchmaker, never go well. So Penina focuses on her family, her volunteer work holding babies at the local NICU, and her job at a local jewelry store. She’s doing her best to make her life as fulfilling as possible, no matter how much she wants what she can't have.

But everything changes the day a handsome stranger walks through the NICU. This man, Sam Kleinfeld, ends up being Penina’s new boss, the son of the jewelry store’s owner. He’s filthy rich, incredibly handsome, Jewish (though not Orthodox), single (or is he?), and more than a little grumpy. As Penina gets to know him, she realizes how easy it would be to love him, but she’s damaged, he’s not Orthodox, and there’s that super gorgeous, bikini-sporting doctor who keeps tagging him in Facebook photos. So many reasons he’s off-limits.

But as Penina struggles to keep her heart in check and help save her sister’s house, she’ll learn a thing or two about how not damaged she is, what makes a person whole, and maybe she’ll fall in love along the way.
Super cute romance. It’s set in an Orthodox Jewish community, but as Sam is a secular (non-religious) Jew, he needs certain things explained to him and thus he serves well as a point of education for readers who may not be familiar with terms and traditions common among the Orthodox. Penina truly is Every Woman, dealing with not just health challenges that have set the course for her life, but with everyday bouts of awkwardness, like coffee spills, wardrobe malfunctions (a very minor plot point is Penina’s role as a modest fashion influencer on Instagram, which was fun), and constantly managing to say the wrong thing, especially while nervously babbling to fill the silence. Same, girl.

Sam is gruff, a little rough around the edges, but with a good heart. His status as a bit of an outsider, as non-Orthodox, is what allows him to more fully see Penina; to him, she’s not broken or missing something essential like she’s learned to think of herself. Their relationship, always following the strict rules of comportment laid out by Orthodox Judaism, grows, twisting and turning as Penina begins to accept that despite her lack of ability to have children, there’s nothing wrong with her. While at times I felt Sam was maybe a little too gruff (or at least too gruff for my liking, but that’s a personal preference), the two make a good pair.

The ending was exactly what I expected - not just the usual romance HEA, but…I won’t give any spoilers, but in that context, it’s the only acceptable solution. How realistic it is, I don’t know; it’s one I’ve seen before in other outsider-falls-in-love-with-insider type romances, and it always pulls me out of the story just a little bit because I’m wondering about the practicality of it, and how it would work out long-term. But overall, Orthodox Love is a cute, fun romance that gives you a peek inside a world most people aren’t familiar with, and I love that.

Unorthodox Love will be available at your favorite retailers July 11, 2023. Huge thanks to NetGalley, Alcove Press, and Heidi Shertok for allowing me to read and review an advance copy. Support your local bookstores!

Genre: Fiction, Romance
Actual Rating: 4 stars
Spicy Meter: 1 fire emoji
Content Warnings: Deals heavily with infertility and parental sickness. Mentions cancer.

“Unorthodox Love” follows Penina, an Orthodox Jewish 29-year-old that at this point has lost all hopes on getting married—she’s infertile and no proper Orthodox Jew will be okay with not having children of their own. But then in comes an indecent proposal—she is to marry a wealthy (secretly gay) Orthodox Jew in exchange for solving all her family’s monetary problems. It’s a perfect arrangement… so why can’t she stop thinking about Sam, the perfectly secular, objectively attractive, son of her boss, who’ll now be her interim boss as his father is receiving cancer treatment. It makes no sense, he is all she can’t have, so why even give it a second thought, right? Well, wrong.

I loved Heidi Shertok’s writing, it was both engaging and entertaining. I am usually not the biggest fan of clean romance but I must say “Unorthodox Love” left me completely content with this love story. It is truly astonishing this is a debut novel, I honestly can’t wait and see where Heidi’ll take us next.

I hate when a main character or heroine in a romance novel has to leave aside her beliefs (let that be religious or otherwise) to find a happily ever after. I am so so happy this was not the case for Penina.

Don’t hesitate to grab “Unorthodox Love” if you’re looking for a clean workplace romance where opposites attract and religion is a prominent subject (and where an adorably awkward meet-cute was in play).

If you click here, you’ll be redirected to Goodreads, so you can add the book to your TBR list.

Or you could click here, and be redirected to Amazon, so you can order the book.

ARC provided by NetGalley and Alcove Press in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: July 11, 2023

“I’m sweating like a mohel about to perform his first circumcision”. I absolutely loved the prominent Judaism in this romance! Our holidays, traditions, and values are showcased so beautifully and with humor!
I love that Penina, the main character, has a such a big heart and strong sense of self and I definitely would follow her influencer account in real life!

I also want to point out how much I appreciated the strong message of acceptance throughout this book! I will add though a TW for infertility. I wish I had that ahead of time personally.

Thank you @heidishertok @dreamscape @netgalley for the ARC!

This is not a book I would normally pick up, and I think that is why I enjoyed it so much. I learned a lot about the Jewish faith through the main character and her dating struggles. I felt bad that she was not considered suitable dating material because of her fertility. I have found myself thinking of the book and characters from time to time.

Unorthodox Love was a combination of some pearl-clutching tension, laughs, and an inside look into a religion that I had little knowledge about. Penina was so relatable in the 'have to take care of everyone' trope and I really loved watching her slowly come into the acceptance that you simply can not protect everyone in your family all the time. Those moments of hurt and learning lessons are just as important as the moments of joy and celebration.

I was expecting the fake marriage trope to take a larger part, though I'm not sure why because it's not like I was expecting the gay man to magically fall in love with her. I think it was more wanting a deeper fleshing out of their friendship and the aftermath. The tension and heat between her and Sam was balanced well and while reading other reviewers noting that Sam was unbearably rude and mean, I didn't experience that as much. Maybe I was too focused on all of the other character relationships that were floating around that I just didn't notice?

This was a feel good story that really opened my eyes into some of the customs and beliefs of Orthodox Judaism that was worked into the story without feeling like it was preachy or too heavy in a school education way.

Thank you Netgalley and Alcove Press for the advanced copy.

I liked the premise of this book, but this book ended up being an absolute mess. Panina is a relatable, frazzled heroine. There's nothing appealing about Sam, other than his supposed good looks.
This book has an unexpected amount of medical content, from casual mentions of illnesses and injuries, to main plot points of cancer, infertility, and other ailments. I found it a bit jarring.
The audiobook is possibly the worst I've ever listened to. The narrator pronounces words- common English words, and Yiddish and Hebrew, extremely weirdly.

2.5 stars (rounded up)

"Orthodox Love" by Heidi Shertok is a romantic comedy that is very, very, very slow to unfold. I am 35% into the book and basically, only one major thing has happened?! 50% in and I am feeling much the same. I think I know where this story is going, and I don't love it. I did manage to laugh a few times while reading this book. I also enjoyed learning about the intricacies of the Orthodox Jewish religion, which I knew little about. I had no idea that the Orthodox Jewish religion was so strict with its rules on adoption (well, pretty much everything, as it turns out). Seems pretty antithetical to the ideas of religion to me to leave children desperate for a home behind, but I digress. I felt that the main character, Penina, instructed and corrected and admonished others who were not of her faith far too much for my liking. Most of the time, these slights are passed off as jokes, but they felt very judgmental to me. I did like how Penina is able to coexist in the secular world while still adhering to her Orthodox Jewish faith as she reconciles the more progressive, modern future with the archaic, aged past. Apart from this, I did feel deeply bad for Penina, who has always wanted to have a child but, because of a medical condition that rendered her infertile, cannot have children. That experience shaped who she has become as an adult. She has always tried to do what she can to be near children and give back to her community, volunteering in the NICU at a local hospital to fulfill some part of her dream of having kids. As someone who is childless by choice, just because I don't want kids doesn't mean I can't empathize and sympathize with Penina's yearning to have a baby. Marriage and babies are apparently a huge part of the Orthodox Jewish faith. However, Penina is SO desperate to find a man, and she is SO down on herself for being infertile that it really started to grate on my nerves! Her choices wind up being someone who is gay who is offering her money and someone who doesn't exactly share the same religious views as her. This doesn't sit right with me at all and feels shamey to people in the LGBTQIA2S+ community, like it would be better for Zevi to fake being someone he's not just to please his dying mother rather than be out and proud. Yikes. To me, Penina's relationship with Sam felt forced, not angsty. He could have literally been anyone else who gave her even a modicum of attention and she would have been head-over-heels. I'm usually all for the grumpy-sunshine trope, but Sam's grumpiness felt more mean and angry than sexy and brooding. There need to be more books representing the various forms of Jewish faith in romantic fiction. Some readers will find more to love here than I did. Unfortunately, I didn't think there was enough differentiation between the voices of the characters in the audiobook narration to call it successful. Because of this, some of the characters were muddled together and it became confusing. I had to stop listening and pick the book back up later because the voices became a bit too cluttered.

Thank you to NetGalley, Heidi Shertok, and Alcove Press for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for my review.

i could not get into it but the idea of the book was really cute. i loved the idea of what the book was supposed to be about but honestly i got bored about 50% in

This is contemporary romance for sure, but oh so clean! Main character Penina is 29, which seems like a great age for a romance main character - she's older, wiser, and more mature. I also loved that Penina was unabashedly an Orthodox Jew, with the subsequent explanations of the customs and practices (making it very accessible for the non-Jewish reader). I was totally rooting for Penina to find her happy after the whole time, and adored Sam for the most part. It was funny in parts, and a nice cast of secondary characters.

But I struggled with this book. I wanted to absolutely love it and shout about it from the rooftops - we need more Jewish romance being published. However I was uncomfortable with the two choices that Penina had - marry a rich gay man and fix her sisters' financial problems OR have romantic lead Sam change his religious practices (or Penina decide that they weren't actually that important to her) made me uncomfortable. While I adored the ending and it really wrapped up things nicely, it was the middle of the book where I struggled. I also felt uncomfortable with how much of a jerk Sam was in the beginning, and how that was okay because it turns out he had feelings the whole time for her. Would I still recommend this book? Definitely! We need more Jewish romance, and I would love to see another book by Heidi Shertok!

I really loved this one. I loved the way Penina was able to be part of the secular world and the Orthodox Jewish world at the same time. Her family reminded me of my cousins, the way we are all just such a mess of oversharing and so protective over each other.
I loved the friends that Penina has, I really liked Maya. I loved the relationship Penina has with her sisters, they were all so filled with so much personality.
The writing was easy to read and I really loved this story.

Penina is 29 and unmarried in an Orthodox Jewish community that values early marriage and many children. Not her fault- she's considered damaged goods because of a congenital condition that makes it impossible for her to have children. And adoption is not an option (I learned something). She's happy working in a jewelry store and as an influencer for modest fashion and then....Sam turns up. The son of the owner of the store, he's gorgeous. And smart. And interested in her. But Penina has been working with a marriage broker and she's considering a fake marriage to Zevi to get the money her sister needs to save her house. Fans of the rom com know how this will end but wait- this is very different from the usual. Shertok has smoothly incorporated Orthodox life and laws into the story and made it special. Penina is a great character, as are the rest. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Shertok's a good storyteller and I very much enjoyed this.

I had found myself on Jewish Orthodox TikTok and then the approval for this book happened - I was really enjoyed in the moments where the FMC talked about her style and the interaction with social media, I wish there were more of those.

But then there was just too much of a lot - death of a family member, infertility, cancer, and we just never got to really know her. I wanted to love Sam more, but he was described negatively often and it stuck.

I could really see how the author wanted those of who were people pleasers to connect with the Penina and as one I did - but it was repetitive and I was hoping that she would work through it a little more.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for my review.