What Happens When You Love Christmas...but You're Jewish?

The Matzah Ball, Jean Meltzer
For years, Christmas has been Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt's safe place. The daughter of a famous rabbi and a fertility physician, she battles both Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the naysayers who claim it doesn't exist; although a devout Jew she both collects Christmas kitsch and writes famous Christmas romances under the name Margot Cross, both which she keeps secret from her parents. However, this year her pushy publisher wants to branch out and asks her to write a Hanukkah romance. (Frankly, I don't blame Rachel; the publisher just wants to do this so the company can say they're behind diversity, which is annoying.) Rachel feels lost after years of writing Christmas stories, and thinks she can get ahold of the proper spirit if she attends the Matzah Ball, a big specialty blowout dance for wealthy Jewish people. But all the tickets are sold out...unless she can get one from Jacob Greenberg, who's running the event, and also the boy who broke her heart at age 12 at Camp Ahava.

The characters in this are...okay. I sympathized with Rachel, who basically has a condition a lot of doctors don't believe in and who suffers terribly if she exerts herself too much, and how she didn't want her conservative parents to know her secrets. She's also been burdened for years with the idea that as the famous rabbi's daughter she was required to be Miss Perfect. Jacob also has had his problems: his mother was also chronically ill (from a different disease) and he grew up throwing himself into his work in order to escape his fears and his guilt.

Other things didn't gel too well. Except for Jacob's wonderful bubbie Toby, my favorite character in the book, all the people in the novel seem to be rich and I couldn't relate to them. The whole Matzah Ball thing seemed so over-the-top compared to the sort of amusements my Jewish friends partake in. It also struck me as weird that Jacob and Rachel couldn't get over this "thing" that separated them back in summer camp. I mean, they were twelve, and never moved on? And then there's Mickey. Don't get me wrong, Mickey is a great best friend—Rachel's a lucky girl to have such a great friend. But again...wacky gay friend. This is something like the third or fourth book I've read where the straight female protagonist has a wacky gay friend. Plus Mickey meets several other overdone tropes: he's a black gay kid who was adopted by two Jewish lesbians.

It's cute, but depends on your tolerance for two emotionally miserable people involved with what's basically a rich person's gathering.