I enjoyed this for the most part. It had a lot of really sweet and cosy moments, and I found the way they talked about taking charge of your life really inspiring. It would have been four stars for me, but in the third act conflict, Leo said something, in my opinion, unforgiveable about Andie being an orphan, and it made me so angry I needed to dock a star for it. It immediately made me dislike him, which is a shame, because I thought he was a great love interest up until then.

Overall this was a cozy holiday romance. It felt a little heavy-handed at times and the dialogue occasionally clunky, but not so much that it distracted me too much. I appreciated the different types of family relationships that were explored by featuring both Andie and Leo’s family experiences. It felt integral to a Hanukkah story, and also added a lot of depth to both characters. I thought it was interesting beginning the story when the MCs already knew (or knew of) each other and felt that helped build their chemistry.

Eight Nights to Win Her Heart by Miri White is a sweet Jewish romance with a Hanukah meet cute.

Andie is spending her first holiday alone, following the death of her father....and then she meets Leo.

Full of jewish representation, this is a great holiday read that felt like a Hallmark Hanukah movie.

I love that there is a Hanukkah addition to the holiday romances I love to read this time of year. And while there are a lot of positives here, there are negatives that made it difficult to read. First of all, I was so annoyed by Andie most of the time. She was so self righteous about her job, so quick to be offended, and discounted a lot of what Leo was feeling through out the book. Leo was so desperate for love that he was willing to overlook everything and just apologize constantly for everything. I am not against this but I just wish that both characters went for some therapy as part of their romance. I loved Millie a lot and I love the tease at the end for another book which I will definitely be reading since I liked that character better anyway.

As ably demonstrated by both this book and Monday’s Love You a Latke, the eight nights of Hanukkah represent the perfect amount of time for a relatively quick but totally not insta-romance between two people who already know each other but don’t really KNOW each other.

You’ll see.

Andie and Leo have been neighbors in their apartment building for a while, more than long enough for them to have crushes on each other that they’ve each been either afraid, or too busy, or both to even attempt to figure out if there might be more.

That neither of them knows whether the other is Jewish is a part of that hesitation – and not an unreasonable part. It’s just that the list of reasons is long on both sides – Andie and her father were a tight-knit circle of two after the death of her mother and estrangement from the rest of his family, and he just passed away earlier in the year.

Leo – along with his younger brother Dean – have been locked in a terrible cycle of grudges and retribution over the future of their family business for the past twelve years. It’s even worse than it sounds, as the incident that Glen Dentz has been holding over his sons for more than a decade happened when Leo was in his mid-teens and Dean was even younger. They should NEVER have been roughhousing in the back of the family’s antiques store. BUT dumb behavior and teenagers do go hand in hand.

They’ve been making up for it ever since and there has been absolutely no budging on even the possibility of forgiveness on the part of their father. To the point where Leo and Dean are ready to buy the family business from their father – just as he got it from HIS father – and dear old dad is so caught up in his own bitterness that he’d rather sell it to a stranger than his own sons.

Who have been the ones actually running the business – and making a profit at it – for several years at this point.

Both Leo and Andie are on the horns of very different dilemmas – which is what makes for the best kind of realistic tension in romance. Andie is a preschool teacher, and the program she works for and LOVES is shutting down at the end of the year due to a lack of funds. Leo needs to decide just how much he can keep giving 110% to a business that may never be his – and more importantly – to a father who will never let his adult behavior redeem a not merely childISH but outright childHOOD mistake.

Andie has to decide whether to accept a job offer in Ohio, far away from the Boston area she loves that holds her friends and all of her memories of her beloved father. Leo has to decide whether it’s time to strike out on his own – even if that strikes any possibility of reconciliation with his father.

After a chance meeting in the hallway of their apartment building over a broken bag filled with some equally broken Hanukkah candles, Andie and Leo both decide to make this Hanukkah one to remember. With each other. Even if whatever relationship they build comes with a limited shelf life.

But Hanukkah is the season of miracles, and with the help of a magic menorah and a conniving ten-year-old, Leo and Andie might just manage to get a great one.

Escape Rating B: As part of being one of the Elves for this year’s Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon, I was looking for stories that were not the usual suspects when it comes to ‘holiday’ stories. Meaning either romances that were wrapped around holidays other than Xmas that are celebrated this time of year, like today’s book and Monday’s Love You a Latke, or are holiday stories but specifically not romances, such as yesterday’s marvelous combination of Sherlock Holmes and Christmas in What Child is This? (Still not a combo I was expecting but all the more fun because of it!)

Today’s Hanukkah romance is exactly the kind of cozy, feel good romance with just the right amount of will they/won’t they (of course they will!) tension to spice things up. that readers LOVE for the holidays. Along with just the right amount of spiciness to literally heat things up during an inconveniently convenient overnight power outage.

I adored Andie and Leo as a couple, and it was easy to feel for both of their personal dilemmas. Andie’s choice between a bird in the hand – an actual job offer – and the HOPE but uncertainty that she’ll find something in the place she wants to stay was very real. She has no one to rely on but herself. She needs a job to support that self. And she’s not wrong to worry that cuts to all kinds of social services including preschools will make her job search MUCH more difficult.

Leo’s family, on the other hand, is very much the kind of warm, nurturing, teasing and loving family she’s always secretly wished to be a part of. Her mother died when she was three, so her late father was the only parent she knew. They were close, their relationship was very tight and her loss is still so recent that the gnawing grief is fresh.

While Leo’s family – as wonderful as it is on the surface – has a canker in its heart. As much as she wishes she could be adopted by all of them, the relationship between Glen Dentz and his two sons is the kind of cancer that will destroy the family if he can’t be made to see the damage he’s already done.

And that’s the hard part of the story in more than one way. Families do go sour like this. If you haven’t ever seen it happen in real life you’ve been lucky. Very much like Abby’s toxic parents in Love You a Latke, I really wanted to see Glen have a, pardon me, come-to-Jesus epiphany one way or another. Which he did – unfortunately in exactly the way I was expecting, which blunted things a bit for this reader.

But Glen’s change of heart – or mind – or both – came way too easily. It was a bit like Scrooge in that the spirits did it all in one night. Or all in the consequences of one act of profound hubris, blind greed and utter stupidity. Consequently, the resulting forgiveness didn’t feel earned. Some miracles may be just too big for even Hanukkah to encompass.

Still, there is a LOT to love in Eight Nights to Win Her Heart. Including, but absolutely not limited to, the utterly hilarious foam sword fight between the attacking little Maccabees and the defending ‘King Leo’ at the children’s Hanukkah celebration at the Temple. And Millie. Conniving, manipulating, plotting, planning and ultimately successful little Millie. Who feels so justified after her success at matchmaking for her Uncle Leo that she’s planning to work her wiles on her Uncle Dean NEXT Hanukkah – if not sooner!

This was not for me. The writing was messy and tough to get into. The main characters were rude to each other and others and then all of a sudden fallen for each other. Just didn’t flow well.

Thank you for letting me read this fun and sweet holiday Hannukah book. I adore anything with a solid male main character. This was sweet and I look forward to more from this author

A bittersweet Chanukah. I loved both Leo and Andie. And while it's it's a Chanukah rom com anyone can relate to that first holiday without a parent (not a spoiler it's in the blurb) loss and heartache. And while I personally couldn't finish it as I try to avoid books about the lost of a character's dad that's something I don't want to imagine that loss as it's the one remaining parent I have. However, other readers who don't have that issue will enjoy this one. And the parts that I did read I enjoyed and will read more by the author. This one just wasn't for me.

I really wanted to love Eight Nights to Win Her Heart, but unfortunately this just didn't hold my attention like I had hoped and I skimmed through most of it .

Andie and Leo have lived in the same building for a while but Will this be the time for them a great read, I liked how it was told from both points of view and learning about a different culture.

A Jewish rom-com featuring a HOH (hard of hearing) person… count me in! We meet Leo, who is HOH and wants to take over his father’s antiques business. We also are introduced to his neighbor, Andie who is a preschool teacher looking for a new job because her program had been cut. They decide to spend eight nights of Hanukkah together. Now Andie isn’t sure if she wants to move to Ohio for her new job and has to decide if she wants to stay in Boston. I don’t know if I’ve requested an ARC as fast as I did for EIGHT NIGHTS TO WIN HER HEART. Three things that spoke to me: deaf/hoh rep, jewish rep, and New England setting. As a deaf and Jewish New Englander, this was the book I needed! It is cozy, fun and heartwarming read. I will be raving about this book to everyone. Can’t wait to read more from this author in the future! Thank you NetGalley and Alcove Press for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

(rounded up from 3.5)
There’s always a ton of Christmas-related romance books so it’s lovely to discover a new Chanukah-related one. Andie is a preschool teacher who will be losing her job because the nursery school program she loves is being cut. She’s not looking forward to moving from the Boston area to Ohio for a new job but preschool teacher jobs are apparently hard to find. (Are they?? Or are they just badly paid?) Anyway, Leo is her neighbor and has had a crush on her for a long time but hasn’t made his move - he’s shy and a bit awkward. When they finally do start talking, it’s because she dropped her grocery bag and he saw the box of Chanukah candles. Which leads to an effort on Leo’s part to woo her during the eight-day holiday. Leo needs to charm Andie enough that she will decide not to move.

As in most romances, you know they will end up together, so the joy is always in the journey the couple takes to get there. In this case, it was a lot of starts and stops. I kept rooting for them, however.

One thing I really disliked was Leo’s father and his attitude toward his two sons. As someone who raised three boys, I know that they can make some really big mistakes, especially as they turn into teenagers. (Don’t we all do that?) But the 12-year-long grudge that Leo’s dad held onto felt unrealistic, especially given the otherwise warm and close Dentz family. Leo and his brother Dean want to take over the business but the father’s grudge is preventing this from happening.

I loved that Leo is hard of hearing, even at 28, and needs hearing aids. You don’t see a lot of that in novels unless the person is elderly. In Leo’s case, it happened from getting very sick when he was 16. The author treated this beautifully. I also loved all the Chanukah-related traditions and events, especially the festival at the family’s synagogue, with dreidel games and fake Maccabee sword fights.

Note: there are quite a few explicit steamy scenes, so if that bothers you, be aware.

Thank you to Alcove Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

This was a Jewish romance in which Andie and Leo, next-door neighbours, were getting to know each other throughout the Jewish holiday of Chanukah. It so happened that Andie was facing a potential move to Ohio for a job there as she couldn't find any suitable nearby. They'd been neighbours for a long time but Leo hadn't had the courage to approach her until then.

They both had their own hurdles to overcome. Leo's father hadn't forgiven him and his brother Dean for a mistake over a decade ago and was going to sell the family's antique business to someone else instead of leaving it to his sons. Leo wanted his father's approval. Andie had lost her father recently and was facing the holiday alone. Leo was a good distraction and had the family that she wanted.

While I loved the Jewish traditions that were featured as Leo and Andie got to know each other, there were some things I didn't like. Millie, Leo's ten-year-old niece, didn't really sound like her age 😂 Andie's reactions to Leo's missteps were also a bit much. He was a saint in all this 😂

Thank you to Netgalley and Publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. It's out now!

Rating: 3.5⭐
Steam level: 3🌶️ Two mild open door scenes

This was a super sweet holiday story. A great couple with a beautiful story that everyone can enjoy reading!

Eight Nights....

I got super jacked up when I saw that there was a Chanukah romance book! So yeah, I was onboard for that. In Eight Nights to Win Her Heart, Andie is spending her first Chanukah alone. While struggling to get her groceries into her apartment, the bag breaks and Leo rushes to help. He has had a crush on Andie for some time and offers to join Andie on the first night of Chanukah. Eight Nights for Andie and Leo to get to know each other, eight nights for feeling to grow, eight nights.......

There is a dilemma that involves Andie preparing to move for a job. But they have a connection, both are drawn to the other, both know Andie is going to be moving, but Leo is determined to win her over.

It's all about the journey with romance books and this book had quite a journey. Each character had things going on in their lives. Each was drawn to the other. I liked how both characters supported and encouraged each other. Of course, there will be a bump in the road, but....

Leo was my favorite character, and I rooted for him the entire book. He is a thoughtful and likeable person. Who wouldn't want to spend time lighting the Chanukah candles with him! He is also hard of hearing, and I thought that was delt with very nicely. I admired Andie's passion for her job and joy of teaching.

This is a debut novel and the author shows promise. This wasn't a perfect book, but I found it to be enjoyable and love the Chanukah theme. Some might learn more about Chanukah from the traditions mentioned.

A heartwarming read!

I enjoyed reading Eight Nights to Win Her Heart by Miri White. You will fall in love with all the characters. I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely. Happy Reading!

Eight Nights to Win Her Heart by Miri White is a sweet Jewish rom-com debut!
Y’all I adored Leo and Andie. Their personalities were amazing and chemistry was great.
The storyline had me on the edge of my seat. I really enjoyed the character development from both characters and will definitely be recommending this to everyone!
This is a solid rec to anyone that loves the romance genre.
The author did an amazing job for her debut novel. I cannot wait to read more from her!

Thank You NetGalley and Alcove Press for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

I was so excited for this one and I really enjoyed it, overall it was a very cute read with the fantastic element of Hannukah that isn't often see in romance books

This was a fun Hanukkah romance. Both Leo and Andie are very good people and I was so happy to see them together. The big mix up/break up was pretty easy to predict, but it led to a great resolution. If you are looking for more Hanukkah romances, this is as sweet as a jelly doughnut.

A Hanukah insta-love romance! Andie and Leo meet cute when he helps pick up her bag of stuff, which includes a box of candles, giving them something to relate with. Turns out though, that she's probably going to move for a new job and Leo's, I gotta say a jerk about it. He's got his own problems with his father, who wants to sell the family antique business they love. Can these two build enough of a relationship (and can Andie find a teaching job locally) during the eight nights of the holiday? This has lots of good vibes especially from Leo's family (his niece Millie is a hoot) and a nice bit of spice. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A good read.