Publication Date: October 21, 2025
Can these exes rekindle their love this Hanukkah?
Evelyn Schwartz has the perfect Hanukkah planned: eight jam-packed days producing the live-action televised musical of A Christmas Carol. Who needs family when you’ve got long hours, impossible deadlines, and your dream job? That is, until an accident on set lands her in the medical bay with one of her chronic migraines, and she’s shocked to find her ex-husband, David Adler, filling in for the usual studio doctor.
It’s been two years since David walked away from Evelyn and their life in Manhattan, and his ex-wife is still the same workaholic who puts her career before everything else—especially her health. But when Evelyn begins hallucinating “ghosts” tied to her past heartbreaks, and every single one leads to David, he finds himself spending much more time with her than he anticipated. And denying the still-smoldering chemistry between them becomes impossible.
As Evelyn revisits her ghosts of Hanukkah past, she and David both begin to wonder if they can have a Hanukkah future. But with a high-stakes production ramping up the pressure on Evelyn, and troublesome spirits forcing them both to confront their most difficult shared memories, it might just take a Hanukkah miracle for these two exes to light the flame on their second-chance at love.
Jean Meltzer has a knack for creating the most real characters, not just relatable. In The The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah, you feel like each character is living in your own family as the story unfolds. However, her insight into human emotion is so deep that this time, you actually understand each person’s quirks.
Fans of Meltzer will enjoy connections from her other books sprinkled among the plot. Each one was a fun pop that fit naturally into this story. The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah felt a little more campy than the previous novels, but December rom-coms many times are! This version of A Christmas Carol follows a producer at the pinnacle of her career. She is handling a most unusual, wack-a-doodle superstar actor who will sing and dance and bring a live-action A Christmas Carol to life and draw in the audience.
Just as all Meltzer fans know, each book features a character who deals with chronic illness and is often overlooked in their life struggle. Here, Evelyn suffers from migraines that are seemingly pulling forth apparitions that demonstrate her past heartbreaks.
Early on, before the first ghost appears, we get a glimpse into much of Evelyn’s emotional pain. David, her ex-husband, has returned to his old job as a television doctor on set. Together, they manage her migraines and the over-dramatic actor. This is where the slapstick humor started to ramp up a bit much for me until… WHAM! I was slapped with a heartbreak I didn’t expect. Without spoiling this turn of emotional events, I can say that Jean Meltzer’s reason for writing this story came from a place of past, present, and future tragedy and will help you empathize with women dealing with unimaginable pain in more ways than one.
The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah begins as a campy rom-com version of A Christmas Carol, but ends with real insight into the intimate pain suffered by many.
Jean Meltzer studied dramatic writing at NYU Tisch and has earned numerous awards for her work in television, including a daytime Emmy. She spent five years in rabbinical school before her chronic illness forced her to withdraw, and her father told her she should write a book—just not a Jewish one because no one reads those. Magical Meet Cute is her fourth novel.
