There are some very clever stories in this anthology. All well written, with some stories more interesting than others. But most of them are more 'Hanukkah adjacent'. The only connection to Hanukkah for the majority is that the season is appropriate. There are a few exceptions - I would say that Mi Shebeirach, Dead Weight, Not a Dinner Party Person all have a more direct link to the holiday than the others. And maybe I'd include Lighting the Ramora, if only because of the clever malapropism. Shamach, a story about an adult son living with his father, is more depressing than noir. If I Were a Rich Man is a fun story, not particularly about Hanukkah, but interesting. I actually purchased a copy of the hard cover edition for my sister, as she is 'much more Jewish' than I, and I thought she'd get a kick out of this concept. Will she enjoy it? Who knows, but there's a good chance she'll like some of it so that makes it worthwhile. I want to add one more point - matzohs! They are mentioned in several stories, including one that I enjoyed, Dead Weight (matzoh ball soup). These are NOT associated with Hanukkah, they are part of Passover. It's almost like a bunch of people writers were gathered in a room and given an assignment to write a story about Hanukkah and didn't really research the subject. I still enjoyed a great deal of this book but Mr. Goldberg, please proof your stories! I listened to the audio version of this collection, and the narrators were excellent! I could hear my uncles and grandfather in their voices. But would I recommend this book - not in its entirety, but if someone does pick it up I hope they listen to the audio version.

This audiobook ARC was provided by the publisher and NetGalley, the opinions expressed herein are strictly my own.

I couldn't stop listening to these stories. I thought they would be perfect for quick little listens while I walked or dud errands but I stayed up late into the night listening. Not a bad story in the bunch. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook

First off, I didn't quite make it through the audiobook before it was archived. The time to archive from download was too short, at least for me.

I kept picking this one up while working around the home and putting it down because I couldn't get into it. A series of short stories loosely held together by the contemporary timeline and "Hanukkah noir," a genre I didn't know existed. Yes, each story covered the holiday with a splash of horror (sometimes literal splashes). But there was little point to each one. Some stories seemed to express regret and longing after loved ones had past ... most others, however, seemed random and pointless. Old men screwing young ladies. Heists gone wrong. Skipping out on family celebrations with pets for unknown reasons. Maybe I just didn't get it, but I also didn't want to work so hard to figure it out.

(3.5 stars, rounded down)
It’s often really hard to review a book of short stories and this one is no exception. In theory all these stories (11 of them, not 8 as you might expect from the title) all have some sort of connection to Hanukkah, but a few of them were so minimally connected that there was almost no connection at all.

The eleven stories are (in order);
Johnny Christmas by Ivy Pochoda
Shamash by David L. Ulin
Twenty Centuries by James D.F. Hannah
If I Were A Rich Man by Lee Goldberg
Come Let Us Kiss And Part by Nikki Dolson
Mi Shebeirach by J.R. Angelella
Dead Weight by Liska Jacobs
Lighting the Remora by Gabino Iglesias
Not A Dinner Party Person by Stefanie Leder
The Demo by Jim Ruland
Eight Very Bad Nights by Tod Goldberg.

There is also a foreword by Tod Goldberg.

I think the description of these stories as “noir” is about right. They all involve some sort of criminal activity. Some of them have sympathetic main characters and some absolutely do not.

I think my favorite story was Mi Shebeirach (a traditional Jewish prayer that asks for God's blessing and healing for those who are ill or in need of strength). It involves a woman whose husband has become addicted to painkillers. She gets involved with a shady guy, doing courier runs for him, so that she can get the pills her husband needs. Her encounter with an Orthodox man is life-changing for her.

On the audio version, there are a number of different narrators: Johnny Heller, Emily Lawrence, Robb Moreira, and Jasmin Walker.

Thank you to Recorded Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to a review copy of this audiobook. All opinions are my own.

I received an ALC thru netgalley. This book is a collection of short stories, the majority of them set about crimes or Jewish people being wronged around Christmas. I really enjoyed Johnny Christmas, If I was a rich man, I'd be Goldberg, and Not a dinner party person. The only reason I finished this book is because it was audiobook. Not all the stories are worth the listen, and the good ones are spread throughout to keep the audience engaged. Overall was meh with occassional spark due to the short story listed above.

A mixed bag of short stories

This anthology of 11 short stories aims to bring together the very different concepts of Noir and Hanukkah. It partially succeeds.

There were some good stories and some bad, I remember the first and last most vividly, as intended by Tod Goldberg, the editor and contributor of said final story. Each story has a different narrator, which helps the voice of the story. I did not enjoy every single one of them, but above average for my personal listening habits. I also listened on 1.25 speed because that's what my brain needs.

Some of the anthology was disturbing in the wrong sense: two stories feature full pronounciation of Yud Hey Vav Hey, which I found more horrible than the contents. One explains Hebrew terms nicely to the reader but keeps referring to them as Yiddish and to the prayers as being said in Yiddish, which made me wonder whether this was proofed by a Jewish editor at all.

Overall, it was okay but unfortunately not stellar.

Warnings for violence, sexual content, the name of G-d and the usual Noir things.

I first saw this book featured in a "New Arrivals" Instagram story from a local bookseller. I was intrigued that this is a winter holiday book that's not centered around Christmas... and further than that, it's also a winter holiday book that's not centered around a romance plot. Eight Very Bad Nights is a collection of eleven Hanukkah noir short stories from several different authors. In most of the stories, there's more emphasis given to noir and not so much to Hanukkah besides brief mentions; however, at least two stories ("Shamash" included) used facets of Hanukkah more deeply throughout their narratives. I preferred some stories to others; my favorite in the series was "Not a Dinner Party Person." (I love an unhinged, neurodivergent female narrator.) I wouldn't say I disliked any of the stories, though a few felt a bit boring at times. Some themes and characters also started to feel too repetitive across the stories, but that may be a "me problem" since noir isn't my typical genre. One story is very NSFW (i.e., complete with sextortion, orgies, and so on), so if you are sensitive to certain topics, please check the full content warnings on Storygraph before reading.

If you plan to pick up this anthology, I highly suggest opting for the audiobook version. The narrators changed between stories, and I thought they were all talented. (Audiobook production is seriously becoming so good lately. These narrators aren't just reading words off a page as one might think but giving full-on performances with different accents, voices, and inflections. I'm here for it.) Tod Goldberg was the standout narrator, in my opinion. (He also compiled the anthology and wrote some of the pieces. Triple threat over here! 👀) I am not Jewish, but I still enjoyed listening to these stories. I even learned some new information about the history and traditions of Hanukkah. As stated before, there's not too much focus on Hanukkah in the stories, so while this book is great to consume around the holiday time for obvious reasons, it's also fair reading material for any time throughout the year. This book would be great for Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike, as long as they enjoy (or are interested in trying) darker crime stories.

I had fun listening to the stories. Revenge, addiction and a lot of crime is some of the things you can find in those stories. Some end inkind of a good way, others leave it to your imagination. A really good collection!

****1/2

This collection of crime short fiction opens with an introduction stating it is widely believed there are only four ways to die: suicide, homicide, natural causes, and by accident. Editor Tod Goldberg reports that for Jews, habitual annoyance is a fifth way, as anyone whose family comes together for recurring holiday celebrations can attest.

In “Johnny Christmas,” a veteran uncovers the story behind a good Jewish boy’s prison term; “In Dead Weight,” an ex-pat creatively rids herself of the man who doesn’t seem to want her anymore; In “Shamash,” a near-broke schoolteacher on the brink of retirement, caring for his elderly father as a parent does a toddler; in “Twenty Centuries,” a queer homicide detective responds to a call about a recently discovered dead body–and then a second, prompting her to delve into the why of the murder. In “The Demo,” a powerful record label exec is found dead in his office. In the title story, a man wants to make payroll and prevent the flagship store in his father’s former furniture empire from sinking; he gets progressively more embroiled in crime with each passing night of Hanukkah.

Noir is gritty and bleak by definition, usually with a focus on anti-hero victim, so, if you are expecting horror, cozy mystery, or heartwarming holiday tales, this is not the collection for you. There is sex and violence in some of the stories, but it is actually not gratuitous, but rather an expected feature of the noir genre, and these elements are added judiciously to add to the plot, character or setting to evolve the story. For example, in “If I Were a Rich Man” the protagonist stays at a Hampton Inn while trying to hunt down some misplaced diamonds. He flirts with the buxon desk attendent, takes a proffered shiny Red Delicious apple–described as “hard” and “juicy”–and takes a bite as he heads off to his hotel room. It’s a callback to Beresheit (specifically, the Adam and Eve story from Genesis) which the characters acknowledge, in case you don’t have that frame of reference. These details are perfect foreshadowing that they are going to have sex later; and that activity comes back to bite her when she tries to play him.

This is also not a collection about celebrating Hanukkah, per se. Note if you go back to the original tale of the victory of the Maccabees, themes of oppression, persecution, rebellion, fundamentalism, family, obligation, ritual, and tradition contrast (in same cases, horrifically!) with the optimistic miracle of faith, of the light–and the right side–prevailing, downplaying the death and destruction and infighting. Were the Maccabees liberators, or zealots? Is a son who perpetrates patricide commiting a selfless act of love, or ambitious selfish greed? Do you light your candles like Shammai, decreasing by one each night to replicate the waning oil, or like Hillel, increasing the light and your joy with an additional candle each night? The seasonal setting adds some small details about Hanukkah, which just goes to prove that Hanukkah /= Christmas. Our trappings and trimmings are more subtle, with more complexities; in the same way, the stories balance humor and pathos.

My favorite story was “Not a Dinner Party Person,” in which a phamaceutical rep desperate to get her most recent project FDA approved offers unfiltered commentary on the medical research industry and her sister’s abusive marriage over brisket and latkes at dinner on the last night of Hanukkah, while her mother drinks straight gin “martinis” and her pre-teen niece hacks into a competitor’s database. The question of who is right and who is wrong reflects subltey back to the issue of the Maccabees. The title is a neat callback to Mao Zedong’s 1927 essay, Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, in which he reflects the revolution happens through violence, not niceties.

As a collection, the stories feel very much in the vein of early work from short story master Stephen King: tightly written snippets with exemplary detail to character and setting. What’s notable in all of the stories is each author’s command of vocabulary. A short story leaves no room for wandering through word choices and trying to pick just the right way to say something. A finely edited story leaves the reader feeling like there is nothing else that could have been added or subtracted to make the tale anymore perfect. Across the board, these are tight, masterful, subtle, compelling, and uncover a truth about the human condition, particularly, about the Jewish condition. Each main character examines what it means to be Jewish through the lens of the crimes they are adjacent to–or committing. We are a people of generational trauma, guilt, and above all, resilience.

The one component I found off-putting was the verbalizing of the name of G-d in multiple stories. In both cases, it jarred me completely out of the story and gave me a shudder, and made me wonder why. In the text, it’s spelled out as Yahweh–I actually sought out the print version at a local bookstore to verify, and decided in the context (the protagonist is referencing first Temple Judaism), it does make sense. Technically, the original pronunciation has not been uttered since the temple stood, and traditionally, most modern movements pronounce יהוה–the Tetragrammaton–as Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, or any number of other options (Adonai, Elohim, Hashem, Lord, Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, master of the universe)–anything but the actual phonetic utterance that was once reserved only for Yom Kippur, the holiest of the high holy days, and called out only by the high priest.

Overall, the voice acting of the audibook is fantastic. The Hebrew pronunciations are modern, not Ashkenazi, and are spot-on; the narrators sound authentincally Jewish, if there is such a thing, and and in some cases, employ a hint of Eastern European or Bronx Jew appropriately, never caricaturely. A Russian accent is terrific in “Come Let Us Kiss and Part.” Lawrence’s throaty voice sounds a bit like Elizabeth Banks, and she drips with sarcasm, venom equally well as sweet as honey schmoozing. All the voice actors share a slightly smoky tone that adds to the noir ambiance.

The hardcover anthology is nicely packaged: slick but not glossy jacket; thick pages, a reproduction of the dreidel icon imprinted on each page. A menorah with increasing numbers of candles prefaces each story; by the end they’re ablaze. Each story is prefaced with a brief author bio and photo, delineating their noir chops and framed by a top garland of Magen David’s and murder weapons. If Eight Very Bad Nights becomes available in paperback, I’d definitely gift to selective family members during the holiday season. With eleven stories to choose from, you could read one each night with a bonus (or three!) on Shabbat. I would recommend making the individual stories available in digital text and audio, as well as a complete collection–for $36, double chai.

I received a free, advance listener’s review copy of #EightVeryBadNights via #NetGalley, courtesy of #RecordedBooks. A review will post to HLBB on 12/2/2024.

I liked this overall. As with all anthologies, some stories were better than others.
The audiobook performers were excellent and helped immerse me into the stories. The first one with Emily Lawrence felt a bit robotic, but she grew on me. Jasmin Walker was excellent!
I think my favorite stories were Mi Shebeirach, Not a Dinner Party Person (good for her), Johnny Christmas, and Eight Very Bad Nights.
And as someone born/raised in Vegas, I really liked Come Let Us Kiss and Part. It’s very clear that the author Nikki Dolson actually lives there. Too many details only locals would know about!

Dnfed at 20%. I will not be giving it any stars since I don’t think I read enough to rate it.

This book is anthology of Jewish noir stories, centred around Hanukkah and Christmas.

I liked the introduction and first story. But I could not make it through whole book. It failed to grasp my interest, and the narration felt flat.

Thank you to netgalley for an audio arc of this book!

The market is oversaturated with Christmas stories, in all genres, yet more come out each year. I have only seen a handful of Chanukah-themed stories and they seem to come from the romance genre. Seeing a collection billed as Hannukah noir with plenty of humor had me thrilled to start this.

This collection sounded much better in theory than it was in practice. By far, my biggest disappointment was that the majority of the stories had only a passing reference to Hanukkah or even the season. I was expecting there to be more of an emphasis on the holiday itself, and having it relate to the story in some way. Instead, the references to Hanukkah had no impact on most of the stories besides a passing mention.

I could have lived with that, but most of the stories didn’t really grip me. I’m aware of the fact that it is hard to fully develop a mystery as a short story, but both pacing and quality of the stories were inconsistent. Additionally, I was disappointed in the narration choices—none of the narrators that came across Hebrew words sounded natural saying them, and I couldn’t help but wish that the narrators chosen had some Jewish representation to them.

There were a few stories that I did like. Mi Shebeirach and Shamash come to mind, and it isn’t much of a surprise to see that those were the ones with the most connection to Judaism. A mi shebeirach is a blessing for someone to heal, and the shamash is the ‘helper candle’ that is used to light all the other candles.

For most of the stories in the book, I had a hard time connecting with them and getting invested, and some were significantly slower paced than others. One felt like little more than thinly veiled pornography, and this is coming from someone who is relatively hard to shock. I found the differences in quality throughout the collection a bit jarring. Overall, this wasn’t the Hanukkah noir collection that I have been dreaming of, but it did introduce me to some new authors that I haven’t heard of before.

I’m not sure if it’s this collection or if short stories just aren’t for me, but I had a hard time with this one. As a Jewish fan of mystery and thriller books, I was super excited to read this collection, but I couldn’t make it through the whole book. Some stories were better than others, and only a few actually centered on Hanukkah. I was hoping to like this, because I thought it’d make a great Hanukkah gift, but it missed the mark for me.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending me an audio copy in exchange for an honest review through NetGalley.

I was really looking forward to some Hanukkah inspired stories in this anthology and while some of them delivered exactly that, others did not. However, I can guarantee there is a story here for everyone.

There were stories more on the humorous side, like Not A Dinner Party Person (5*), which was probably the best story included in this anthology. There were more serious stories with heavier themes, like Mi Sheberirach (5*), which was excellently written. And while I didn't enjoy every single story, I can say honestly that I was very much entertained for the majority of this book.

What definitely helped, were the audiobook narrators who did a fantastic job narrating each story and bringing them to life in a way that kept me interested. I'd recommend this holiday themed anthology.

Actual Ratinf: 3.75☆

I was thrilled to see a Hanukkah inspired anthology, especially a noir one. Like most anthologies the writing style varies from story to story so not every story is a good fit for every reader.

My favorite part hands down was the intro which does really grab you. And my favorite story is Not a dinner party person by Stefanie Leder.

I wish some of the stories would have had more of the Hanukkah theme in them then there was but overall it was a nice holiday themed read with a nice in theory but slightly lacking representation.

Thank you Netgalley and RBmedia for an audio arc! All opinions are my own.

Pretty uneven, a few good revenge stories and some random sex and violence. As with many holiday themed collections, there are not a lot of holiday plot points. Random mentions of it being Hannukah, but that is it.

If you’re like me, when it comes to holiday stories you usually expect a romance or even a cozy mystery (or maybe a ghost story that teaches the meaning of the season). But that isn’t the case with the book Eight Very Bad Nights. Nope, this book is billed as Hanukkah Noir! Yeah, I’d never heard of it before either, but dang if it wasn’t entertaining. This book features a collection of crime/thrillers stories all centered around Hanukkah. I wasn’t familiar with all the authors but seeing both Lee Goldberg and Gabino Iglesias was more than enough to get my attention. As with any collection there were definitely some stories I enjoyed more than others, but overall I enjoyed them all to some degree. It’s quite the eclectic collection, each story having it’s own identity, own tone, from dark and gritty to rather humorous. In fact Tod Goldberg’s intro to the collection had me laughing, reminding me of a how a sarcastic old high school friend of mine often talked about the holiday. The book features multiple narrators and they all do a great job narrating their assigned stories. I'm not sure this is exactly the book to get you into the holiday spirit, but it will entertain you. I’d like to thank RBmedia | Recorded Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to and review an advanced audio copy of Eight Very Bad Days.

https://www.amazon.com/review/RHV74E15HQKOH/ref=pe_123899240_1043597390_SRTC0204BT_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

4.5 rounded up

Well rounded anthology of twisty gritty and sometimes humorous crime stories at Hanukkah.

As with most anthologies some of the stories are really good and memorable and some were forgotten as soon as the next one started. But it’s a great and unique time.

I will say after reading some other reviews of this book. The term Hanukkah Noir should be enough to let you know that this isn’t cozy warm fluffy stories. It’s about crime and some the stories end abruptly leaving you kind of surprised and (for some of us honestly a little delighted). But maybe check cw before picking it up if crime and curse words will affect your rating or your experience with it.

Thanks to Netgalley and RecordedBooks for an alc.

2.5 stars

Some of these stories were so bleak and miserable, if they'd been any longer, I'd have walked away. Some were good but ended suddenly and reminded me why I'm not a fan of short stories. I should stick with what I like.

Also, very little Hanukkah was in these stories. It seemed more of a coincidence than anything tying them together.

I loved the idea of this book. A collection of noir short stories related to Hanukkah. What’s not to love?!

As expected with collections of short stories, they were not very consistent - some I enjoyed more than others. That said, none really grabbed me, and I found a few were tough to get through. I really enjoyed the inclusion of Jewish customs, but some of the story connections to Hanukkah fell a little short. Overall, while I love mysteries and crime fiction, this wasn’t a hit for me.

The narrators for the short stories were fantastic and really brought the stories to life.

Thank you to #NetGalley and #rbbooks for an ALC in exchange for an honest review.