An interesting collection of seasonal Hannukkah criminal fiction. Some stories are better than others but I had fun reading them. Narrators were fantastic. I enjoyed how much they added to the stories.

I received an arc from Netgalley and the publisher.

Dark Hanukkah, Jewish representation- YES PLEASE! But woof I did not care at all. Only made it 30% in. Not in the mood for boredom.

2.5⭐

The concept for this sounded really interesting which is why I picked it up. Now the execution of the book leaves a lot to be desired. In all cases with a collection of short stories it's hard to find consistency in the stories. The book started strong and then it hit a bit of a slow patch in the middle and then ended strong. Some stories were really great and I really enjoyed them and then others felt like they shouldn't have been in the book. I did skip the story "If I Were a Rich Man" by Lee Goldberg since it was just excessive sexual content.

I honestly found myself slightly disappointed with the lack of Hanukkah in some of the stories since it's meant to be "Hannukah Noir". It was also a lot more spicy than I expected to be which did affect my rating a bit. I do think this will find an audience but unfortunately I wasn't a fan.

All narrators were great in here, they all did a great job!

Wildly entertaining, this is a wickedly good collection of shorts ideal for listening to in between reads, when you only have a few minutes spare, or indeed (as I did) all in one binge.

I was so excited to read this as Jewish fiction doesn’t get the exposure that Christian stories do especially around the holidays. I became quickly disappointed when all the stories weren’t actually about Hannukah or were only very loosely tied. This falls with the person who complied this, Tod Goldberg. I think a real disservice to the title and description of the book was done.

The stories quality was also really uneven story to story. In any anthology you’re going to like some more than others. That’s to be expected but this was beyond that. I also didn’t realize I was going to be getting as much smut as I got.

So while I’m not going to go out of my way to tell people about it o so think it has value purely because of a lack of other anthologies available on this topic..sort of.


I will say the best part of the book was the intro by Tod Goldberg which was cheeky and a nice laugh.


I am thankful to have gotten an audio ALC for free from Netgalley and Recorded books to enjoy which gave me the opportunity to voluntarily leave a review.

My rating system since GoodReads doesn’t have partial stars and I rarely round up.

⭐️ Hated it
⭐️⭐️ Had a lot of trouble, prose issues, really not my cup of tea (potentially DNF’d or thought about it)
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Meh, it was an ok read but nothing special
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Really enjoyed it! Would recommend to others
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! Will circle back and read again