8 Hanukkah Romance Books to Cure the Winter Blues

Meltzer’s Hanukkah romance follows Rachel Rubenstien-Goldbatt, a nice Jewish girl from the Upper West Side of New York who has a secret career as a best-selling Christmas romance novel writer (it’s like holiday romance “Inception”). As she tries to diversify her novels by writing a Hanukkah romance, well, she’s just not that inspired, so she attempts to get tickets to this year’s hottest Hanukkah party, the Matzah Ball. The event is being put on by Jacob Greenberg, a cool and successful event planner who just happens to also be Rachel’s middle-school summer camp crush turned arch enemy. I bet you can see where the book is going.

In Elliot’s third novel, Abby Cohen is the only Jew in her small Vermont town, and is trying to help her local tourism board set up its first ever Hanukkah festival. She struggles to find vendors and explain the holiday — that is, until she meets Seth, who as it turns out is the only other Jew in town. He agrees to help her with the festival if she agrees to pretend to be his girlfriend for his parents when he goes home for Hanukkah. Adorable fake dating romance tropes ensue.

White’s debut novel is a will they/won’t they about Andie and Leo, who despite living across the hall from each other for several years have never really taken the chance to get to know each other. But then Leo notices the Hanukkah candles in Andie’s shopping bag and invites her over to light the menorah together. They spend the next eight nights together, getting to know each other, proving that when it comes to romance, it’s never really too late.

This book is basically a Hallmark movie in book form. Batya Averman has to leave the big city for a job in the small town she thought she’d left long ago. In this small town there exists a latke competition and also an unrequited crush that perhaps was not so unrequited after all. Romance, obviously, ensues.

This novel is perfect for this year’s Chrismukkah, with the added bonus that it’s gay! The main character, Miriam Blum, suddenly inherits her family’s ironically Jewish Christmas tree farm. Initially, all she wants is to sit shiva, ignore her family and then get out of there, but she can’t help but be attracted to the farm’s grumpy manager, Noelle. Together they have to work out a way to save the farm… and maybe find something else along the way.

Aldredge’s novel is a YA romance about Hannah Levin, a New York teenager who goes to Texas to spend the holiday with her grandmother in a small town. Luckily, she meets another Jewish teenager named Noah, who convinces her that a small town in Texas maybe isn’t the worst place to spend Hannukah after all.

Sixteen-year-old Shira has a plan for this Hanukkah season: She’s going to get a boyfriend. The trouble is, she’s a terrible flirt. During a snowstorm, she gets snowed in with Tyler, the most popular boy in school, and they agree to a deal in which he teaches her to flirt in exchange for career connections. But as they spend time together, she discovers that she actually really likes hanging out with him, which wasn’t part of her plan. She has to decide between following her plans and following her feelings.

Gibbs’s novel weaves together the stories of three separate women around the holidays, including Rachel, the distracted bride, Ella, the overworked party planner, and Hannah, who needs to make it home from Tel Aviv in time for her cousin’s wedding. Although not as much of a straightforward romance novel, it definitely falls into the category of feel-good Hanukkah read. Plus, there is a wedding, even if the romance is not the central theme of the story.