Publication Date: August 29, 2023
From the author of THE MATZAH BALL and MR. PERFECT ON PAPER comes this hilarious and emotional rivals-to-lovers romance.
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.
“Back in the before times,” two years ago, Avital Cohen was an up-and-coming photographer. That was before IC, interstitial cystitis, invaded her body. In her third romantic comedy novel, Jean Meltzer gives a vivid description of daily struggles with this chronic disease, a voice to the 1 in 7 Americans affected with pelvic pain, and a character to fall in love with and cheer for leading the story in Kissing Kosher.
The Cohen family is trying hard to keep their kosher bakery going. As the story is retold through the years, a decades-old family feud had ousted childhood friend and business partner Moishe Lippmann from their shared Best Babka in Brooklyn Bakery. Chayim Cohen entrusts the bakery to his children Josh and Avital, along with the prized recipe for pumpkin-spiced babka.
The bakery is filled with workers who respect each other and the art of baking. They are all unsuspecting when Ethan Lippmann is forced by his emotionally abusive grandfather to pose as a baker to steal the cherished recipe. Ethan is bewildered by the supportive family atmosphere at Best Babka. He was raised by his grandfather and given everything money could buy, but he always felt alone and rejected. At Best Babka, he finds friendship, acceptance, purpose, and maybe unconditional love. Will his fearful loyalty to Moishe betray his new friends?
The one person Ethan finds impossible to deceive is Avital. Working together, they find a level of care and hope as each finds a way to live alongside things that have hurt them. The characters are propelled through life events that test their devotion to family and each other.
This story has such a unique plot that I was surprised at so many turns. I could be much more verbose about the charming storyline and characters. However, I am so impressed at the audacious storytelling of Ms. Meltzer and her inclusion of chronic illness in her previous two novels and this one that I really feel my words of admiration should be extended there.
In Kissing Kosher, Avital is 25. We quickly learn that abdominal and vaginal symptoms slowly intercepted her everyday life when she was 23. Doctors can’t quite agree with a diagnosis, medical tests and treatments aren’t always covered, and her painful symptoms may vary from day to day. The symptoms are excruciating to read, and the ways she must navigate daily rituals like eating, sleeping, sitting, urinating, and even having sex are not sugar-coated. I had a very personal connection as I shared many of her symptoms for nearly a year before blessedly finding surgery a successful cure. My relatively short bout with pelvic pain is forever seared in my memory, and I felt such appreciation for the telling of Avital’s story. With 1 in 7 women and even men dealing with some degree of chronic, life-long pelvic pain with no real relief, I can imagine finding this story must be such a validation to so many people facing their every day with fortitude. To have not only Avital’s experience exhibit the pain and life-altering accommodations that are made in the face of chronic pain, but to paint such a beautiful and necessary community surrounding her, acknowledging her, learning from her, and supporting her; this author has my supreme admiration. I may have been empathetic toward Avital and her pain, but I fell in love with Ethan. He wasn’t just the proverbial knight in shining armor, but he was a well-crafted example of how the specific support of a lover can help to heal those who feel they will have to forfeit a loving and sensual relationship to the chains of I.C.
Kissing Kosher reads as a romantic comedy with all the usual fun, but will deeply affect readers as they follow the physical and emotional journey of a young woman with a more common than realized chronic condition.
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. Kissing Kosher is her third novel.
