Love You a Latke
by Amanda ElliotSetting: Vermont, New York
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Holiday, Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy
Published on October 8, 2024
Pages: 368
Format: eBook Source: Library
Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. For one thing, her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning with his sunshiny attitude, determined to break down her carefully constructed emotional walls. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby's been charged with planning their fledgling Hanukkah festival. Unfortunately, the local vendors don’t understand that the story of Hanukkah cannot be told with light-up plastic figures from the Nativity scene, even if the Three Wise Men wear yarmulkes.
Desperate for support, Abby puts out a call for help online and discovers she was wrong about being the only Jew within a hundred miles. There's one other: Seth.
As it turns out, Seth’s parents have been badgering him to bring a Nice Jewish Girlfriend home to New York City for Hanukkah, and if Abby can survive his incessant, irritatingly handsome smiles, he’ll introduce her to all the vendors she needs to make the festival a success. But over latkes, doughnuts, and winter adventures in Manhattan, Abby begins to realize that her fake boyfriend and his family might just be igniting a flame in her own guarded heart.
This is a nice wintery rom-com about a coffee shop owner in a small town in Vermont who gets assigned the task of running her town’s first ever Hanukkah festival. Why Hanukkah? Because there are a lot of other Christmas festivals around and the rest of the council members want their festival to stand out. Does it really matter that the dates they pick don’t correspond to Hanukkah this year? Why is she being so picky about not using the same local Christmas festival vendors as everyone else?
He tried to sell me on garlands of holly as a generic wintertime decoration and on using light-up reindeer noses for a menorah (“There are eight of them! It’s perfect!”)
The only other Jew in the area is a man who annoys her every morning when he comes in with a way too cheery attitude even before he’s had his pumpkin spice latte with whipped cream.
“Have you ever read Anne Frank? ‘In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.’ I try to live by her example.”
….
“Yes, I’ve read The Diary of Anne Frank. I wonder if she still would’ve said that after the people she was talking about killed her.”
Both Abby and Seth start to deal with their personal issues when they go back to New York to look for more appropriate vendors for the festival. Seth needs to stand up for himself instead of running away from conflict. Abby has cut herself off from her horrible family but in the process has removed herself from the Jewish community she loved.
I couldn’t help but feel a flash of fear from being in a public space with a bunch of obvious fellow Jews, because mass shootings and hate crimes. But I pushed it down. If I lived in fear, the Antiochuses of the world won.
Along the way they sample a lot of great food and get ideas for how to incorporate Jewish bakery treats into the coffee shop and how to let those flavors inspire new wintery latte flavors besides Seth’s beloved pumpkin spice.
It’s almost time for a Christmas read!!
This book sounds really great. The fact that it focuses on holiday celebrations can only make it that much better.
I love that it really focuses on the fact that not all winter holidays can be grouped together in one generic holiday celebration if that celebration is just really coded as Christmas.