Kissing Kosher

Kissing Kosher

by Jean Meltzer
Setting: New York
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy
Published on August 29, 2023
Pages: 400
Format: eBook Source: Library

Step 1: Get the secret recipe. Step 2: Don’t fall in love…

Avital Cohen isn’t wearing underpants—woefully, for unsexy reasons. Chronic pelvic pain has forced her to sideline her photography dreams and her love life. It’s all she can do to manage her family’s kosher bakery, Best Babka in Brooklyn, without collapsing.

She needs hired help.

And distractingly handsome Ethan Lippmann seems the perfect fit.

Except Ethan isn’t there to work—he’s undercover, at the behest of his ironfisted grandfather. Though Lippmann’s is a household name when it comes to mass-produced kosher baked goods, they don’t have the charm of Avital’s bakery. Or her grandfather’s world-famous pumpkin spice babka recipe.

As they bake side by side, Ethan soon finds himself more interested in Avital than in stealing family secrets, especially as he helps her find the chronic pain relief—and pleasure—she’s been missing.

But perfecting the recipe for romance calls for leaving out the lies…even if coming clean means risking everything.

Avi never intended to be part of her family bakery. But after she developed a chronic pain disorder, she came home. While her twin brother bakes, she runs the store.

Her grandfather started the bakery with a friend. When they fell out, they both taught their descendants to hate the other family. Now Ethan, the grandson of Avi’s family archenemies, is being sent into Avi’s bakery to steal their prized recipe.

Jean Meltzer has a very strong point of view in her books. The books are about observant Jewish families and chronic disease generally plays a part in the heroine’s lives. In this case, Avi has chronic pelvic pain. The descriptions of what it can be like to live with chronic pain are very well done.

One thing I didn’t like was Avi’s insistence that having an active sex life is an absolute requirement for being in a relationship. I hate that mindset. Luckily she got over this partially during the story.

Other than that, I enjoyed this book. I wish there were recipes for some of the baked goods mentioned. They sounded really good. The intricacies of running a kosher bakery were very interesting. I didn’t know much about that world.