Abby Cohen tried to put dis­tance between her­self and her trau­mat­ic child­hood by mov­ing from the sub­urbs of New York City to small-town Ver­mont, where she owns a cof­fee shop that is strug­gling to sur­vive. All of the town’s small busi­ness­es are in the red, so they decide to host a Hanukkah fes­ti­val to draw in tourists as a unique con­trast to the many Christ­mas fes­ti­vals in the area. Lor­na, the craft store own­er who has devised the plan, vol­un­tells Abby that she’s in charge of the fes­ti­val because she’s the only Jew­ish per­son they know. Abby’s been estranged from her Jew­ish iden­ti­ty for as long as she’s been away from her par­ents, but she takes on the endeav­or to save her shop and the town.

After dis­as­trous meet­ings with local ven­dors try­ing to turn nativ­i­ty scenes into Mac­cabees, Abby real­izes she’ll need the help of oth­er Jews to make the fes­ti­val a suc­cess. The only prob­lem? She doesn’t know any. She turns to a Jew­ish dat­ing app for con­nec­tion and dis­cov­ers the only oth­er Jew­ish per­son in a fifty-mile radius: her most annoy­ing cus­tomer, Seth, who caus­es her hur­ri­cane-lev­el headaches. Seth is run­ning from his prob­lems, too — he moved to Ver­mont from Man­hat­tan to escape a rela­tion­ship and his parent’s expec­ta­tions. Seth and Abby make a deal: Seth will use his Jew­ish con­nec­tions to help Abby with the fes­ti­val, and Abby will join Seth’s fam­i­ly for Hanukkah, pos­ing as his girlfriend.

Over latkes and suf­ganiy­ot, Hanukkah mar­kets, and light­ing the can­dles each night with Seth’s lov­ing par­ents, Abby starts to real­ize how much she has missed in terms of Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and how much she has missed out on because of her abu­sive par­ents. She knows that she’s closed off and believes that she is too frigid, like her ex-boyfriend said when he dumped her. It’s in the com­pa­ny of Seth’s friends and his ex-girl­friend, the beau­ti­ful Freya, that Abby starts to thaw and wor­ry less — about doing every­thing wrong, about how her rest­ing expres­sion makes her appear. She instead allows her­self to build gen­uine con­nec­tions for the first time in years. It’s because of Seth that she won­ders if love is when you feel safe around some­one, when you want to ​“share more with them than you’d shared with oth­ers, maybe ever, even if you weren’t ready to crack open your chest and let them dive into the whole bloody mess.” At the Eighth Night Ball, Abby must con­front every­thing she’s been avoid­ing — the fes­ti­val and her iden­ti­ty both depend on it.

Author Aman­da Elliot has cre­at­ed a feel-good romance that’s big­ger than a hol­i­day rom-com. She address­es how Hanukkah is squeezed into ​“the hol­i­days,” into Christ­mas. She demon­strates an astute under­stand­ing of how Jews are per­ceived, the occa­sion­al lone­li­ness of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, and the cathar­sis of Jew­ish con­nec­tion. Elliot also explores what it means to trust after trau­ma, and cre­ates a beau­ti­ful mod­el for authen­tic female friend­ships. In a world of flim­sy rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Jew­ish women, this nov­el will make many read­ers feel seen. Anoth­er bonus: read­ers will appre­ci­ate Elliot’s delec­table writ­ing about the foods we all love to eat.