This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.
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A pleasant, low-key charmball of a novel, Love you a Latke is a quick, smooth, easy read that brings all of the holiday joy and wintery feelings without a whole lot of angst. Be warned that it IS very tropey, however, so if you find a big parade of characters doing just what tropes say they ought to, avoid this one. But this is a smooth ride without too many bumps, making it a fine holiday weekend read.
It’s winter in Southern Vermont, and local cafe proprietor Abby Cohen is being driven to distraction by her attempt at putting together her town’s first large public Haunnukah celebration. All of this is happening at the behest of their tourism board, who think there’s untapped gold in charming out-of-towners into the state with The Festival of Lights. Since the town’s businesses are starving for new customers, she’s hoping the celebration will drag in people from New York and Boston to come enjoy the seasonal peace of life in the hinterlands. Abby agrees to do it, but is smart enough to know she needs qualified help. Grumpy Abby is one of only two Jewish people in town. She tries to learn who the only other Jewish person there is. Unfortunately, it turns out she’s familiar with him – and she doesn’t like him.
Seth moved to Vermonth planning to marry his ex, Freya, but she dumped him and now he’s getting on without her. His constant cheeriness drives Abby to distraction even though he’s her most regular customer. When the committee throws them together, he agrees to help if she’ll come back to New York with him and pose as his fiancee to impress his folks. The close proximity between them – yes, there’s only a single bed, and of course they must share it – breeds attraction. Abby finds herself rediscovering her joy in Judaism while embracing her love of Seth and his family. But can they get this festival off the ground – and will Grumpy and Sunshine ever truly marry their troths together?
This instantly became my favorite Amanda Elliot book; I wasn’t super over the moon for Sadie on a Plate ( A | BN | K | AB ) and I liked Best Served Hot ( A | BN | K ) all right, but this one finally reached the high B’s for me. Abby is a really fun heroine, all grumpy, jangly nerves coping with hot chocolate orders and light displays while trying to ignore her complicated feelings for Seth. She was fantastic. And I loved that the messy complex way she feels about her parents was not tied up in a neat narrative bow.
But this is a rare romance where I actually wanted a duel POV. Seth’s point of view on Abby was needed because she’s such a grumpypants that figuring out why he falls in love with a girl who totally hated him for months for little to no reason doesn’t make a lot of surface sense.They are cute together, the romance is fun and sweet, but I wanted to be in his head more often. The way he felt about how things went with Freya helped make his reactions to Abby understandable. And Freya appears as a nice, understanding person who totally turns out not to be the villain of the book, which was refreshing as heck.
This was a fine portrait of small town life in New England, in all of its Parks and Recreation-style glory. Fiercely against assimilation, Love you a Latke is a wonderful appreciation about Hanukkah and Jewish life in general. Its warm coziness will also be a light in the lives of romance readers worldwide, and they will enjoy a cozy winter afternoon with it.
