Today Tonight Tomorrow

by: Rachel Lynn Solomon

Simon Pulse 2020

400 pages

Review by: E Broderick

When Rowan Roth, aspiring romance author and heroine of Rachel Lynn Solomon’s YA romance Today Tonight Tomorrow, laments that her passion will never be more than someone else’s guilty pleasure I felt seen. 

And that’s not the only thing this book made me feel.

Rowan teaming up with her arch nemesis to solve an end of high school scavenger hunt is as much a love song to Seattle and adolescence in general than it is about the actual couple. Watching Rowan come to terms with the fact that she often gets so wrapped up in her dreams she misses the opportunities that are right in front of her was a sucker punch. Because who hasn’t done that?

When Rowans classmates express antisemitism, when Rowan herself discovers she has made wrong assumptions based on appearances, the reader is horrified right along with her. When her friendships start to fray at the edges, as all friendships do in times of change, I couldn’t help but mourn my own lost friendships that dwindled due to intention and distance. Yet I never despaired.  because I knew this was a romance novel. And in romance novels I am guaranteed a happily ever after. In fact the cover art basically gives away the entire end game. 

Which is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to feel the feelings and go through the emotional roller coaster knowing there was joy waiting for me at the end. I needed that certainty in order to free myself to experience all the heartache and life lessons that must come before it. 

The moral here goes beyond “there’s nothing wrong with enjoying romance”. The world has been a pretty messed up, dumpster fire, of a place lately. If I can find something that delves into serious subjects but still gives me a happily ever after that makes my heart sing, you best believe I’m not letting anyone treat it as anything less than what it is: precious and rare. 

Today Tonight Tomorrow is a book I would give to writers of any genre looking to learn about craft. We know what the heroine wants, we sob as she is stripped of each and everything she holds dear and then we watch her grow and change and work for that happy ending. We have a character arc that is strong and believable, stakes that only grow as the book progresses, tension that has you reading into the middle of the night and pacing that I would give my left kidney for. 

This is true art. And if you fail to acknowledge that because it is “genre” and contains kissing scenes or is female focused then you don’t deserve the gift that is this book.  

I probably won’t ever write anything this good, I’d settle for even a tenth as good, but I’ll try to be less afraid of admitting the category I write in. Because maybe if we let Sci-Fi have more kissy scenes and be unabashedly female centric for a change it won’t be dead anymore. If we let fantasy feature more than the same white, cishet, European aesthetic we might realize only a very small portion of it is “oversaturated”. If I own this, like Rowan and her romance novel, they maybe I too can get my happily ever after. 

Rebel Daughter

by: Lori Banov Kaufmann

Delacorte Press, 2021

400 pages

Review by: E Broderick

When I think about Jewish summer camp, I remember the color war songs and the overly sweet shabbat wine, the way we all complained about swimming even though we loved it and the perpetually damp towels that never fully dried on the clothing lines. But I also remember Tisha B’Av, the Jewish day of mourning for the loss of the Temple, which always falls in the summer.

The entire camp would sit on the floor. Those who had reached B’nei Mitzvah would fast. The camp library was fully stocked with depressing Holocaust narratives to help those interested muster up some tears for Jewish tragedy across the ages. For many it was a deeply spiritual experience. For me, it was awkward, forced and uncomfortable. 

Those books did not help the situation. Instead, they made me too scared to sleep, convinced me incalculable evil hid in the hearts of everyday humans and filled me with terror so strong I still can’t breathe when I’m waiting for my passport renewal to arrive. They made me sad but they did not help me mourn the temple.

Too bad Rebel Daughter by Lori Banov Kaufmann wasn’t around back then. Although, I’m not sure the camp library would have stocked it. It’s too honest and accurate about how Judaism was practiced in those days. About the fact that while many of our customs are the same, others are wildly different. Proof that we as a people do change over time with outside influence and learn to adapt with society and ever advancing technology while still holding our sacred traditions dear.

Never have I read such a well researched, vivid and gripping description of what life was like for Jews under Roman rule in a work of fiction. Never has the destruction of the Temple, come alive in quite this way for me.

The marketing material had me worried this might be an oppressor/oppressed romance. It is not. Instead this is a meticulously researched fictionalized account of Esther, the daughter of a high ranking temple priest, as she lives through the Jewish revolts against the Romans and the ultimate devastation that resulted. It is a tale of Jew fighting Jew, the shame of subjugation and the loss of everything one holds dear. It brings to focus the shocking reality that sometimes the battle lines we seek to draw are hazy at best and distinguishing ally from enemy is not always easy.

Most of all it is a tale of historical accuracy. I was grateful for the chance to see my ancestors as real people with real lives. Including the fact that young girls were considered women back then and how very much like property women of all ages were treated. This was Esther’s reality and I appreciated the honesty. Even if it did make my stomach turn.

Revelations in this book include the fact that Jews were not always pale, suit-wearing, yeshiva students. Nor were the great Rabbis and priests of old strangers to taking up weapons and fighting. When Esther described muscular Jewish rebels, who also split their time in study houses, it felt right. When she danced in the Tu B’av circle or waited in line for the women’s ritual baths in broad daylight I mourned the fact that such customs would today be called “immodest”. Because we shouldn’t have lost the knowledge of our ancestors right along with our temple.

Who Esther ends up with romantically by the end of the book is, in my humble opinion, besides the point. It’s the “B plot” so to speak and it never took up that much headspace for me. When she does find love it is through a process that Jews have been experiencing for centuries: living through tragedy and figuring out how to survive despite it.

Did I cry? No. But I finally felt the destruction of the temple in a way that was real. I regained a piece of my heritage that had been long lost. To me, that is preferable.

Modern Jewish Baker

by: Shannon Sarna

Countryman Press 2017

264 pages

Review by: E Broderick

When I bake, it comes from a place of love. I feed people to show I care. I create elaborate desserts to express my feelings, doughy testaments to the depths of my unconditional affection. Except for the first time I baked a babka. That was an experience fueled by a rage so powerful only the melted chocolate oozing out of the doughy yet crisp loaf could assuage it.

It was season seven of the Great British Bake Off, my comfort show, and Benjamina was baking a chocolate, tahini and almond babka. It sounded delightful. Benjamina was one of my favorite contestants and she was baking a very Jewish dessert. I felt seen. Then Paul Hollywood showed up and ruined it all. He smugly insisted that Benjamina was baking a couronne, not a babka, because she twisted the dough into a circle instead of a loaf pan.

Excuse you Paul Hollywood. Then go take several seats.

While I myself had never baked a babka, Jewish people had been doing so for ages. I often spotted them twisted into rounds in local bakeries, and I would be damned if I was going to let Paul Hollywood dictate the rules of Jewish dessert.

My people contained multitudes. So could our desserts.

Modern Jewish Baker was already loaded on my Kindle. I had achieved success with some of the challah recipes, my favorite being the garlic and za’atar bread, but something had scared me off from trying the babka. A proper loaf needs to be proofed twice and the rolling, filling and shaping process is fairly involved. Plus everything needs to be coated in sugar syrup several times while baking. I wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.

I was wrong. Fueled by my desire to prove Paul didn’t know a babka from a bagel I decided to try the S’mores babka recipe. Sarna’s instructions were clear, her photos made the shaping process easy to understand, and the babka rings baked up to perfection.

As with several recipes in the book, I needed to make a few adjustments to get the dough to the consistency described, but this did not bother me. In fact, I found the recipes surprisingly malleable and forgiving. My babka technique improved with practice and I began experimenting with my own flavors and fillings using Sarna’s recipes as a base.

They came out perfect every single time.

So when the Great British Bake Off recently featured a babka challenge in which half the contests didn’t even know what babka was and Paul Hollywood completely ignored the fact that true babkas are proofed twice, I kept my cool. I knew how to make babka. What they were doing wasn’t it.

In the subsequent week I was delighted to find several articles interviewing Shannon Sarna about babkas and setting the record straight. I didn’t bother finishing that season of the Great British Bake off. I was too busy baking babkas of my own.

The Sisters of the Winter Wood

By: Rena Rossner

Redhook, 2018

464 pages

Review by Jessica Russak-Hoffman

Jo from Little Women. Lizzie from Pride and Prejudice. An entire childhood spent reaching to see myself in any main character. I thought everybody grasped at straws, looking for the tiniest personality trait in the heroine and holding onto it for dear life. I didn’t know that there were readers out there who read a book and thought: she’s just like me. I didn’t know there were readers who saw themselves on the page.

So when I read Rena Rossner’s THE SISTERS OF THE WINTER WOOD in my 30’s, and experienced this feeling for the first time, literal tears fell down my cheeks. My soul flew. I was overjoyed at finally understanding what publishing professionals meant when they said readers deserved to see themselves represented in literature, and sad for the younger version of myself who never got to.

Set in a village on the border of Moldova and Ukraine, this book is about two Jewish sisters, Liba and Laya, who must face challenges, temptations, love, and the truth about their own magical identities. It’s Jewish fantasy, grounded in the shtetl, and I didn’t know this was something I needed until I had it. Now I want more. This book is laced with more than Jewish identity, it’s laced with Judaism itself. Torah and Chassidic dynasties and mitzvot. Yiddish and Hebrew. Ancient stories and destinies tied together with young Jews deciding for themselves how best to step into world.

I identified most with Liba, whose body is built for the shtetl, who feels the weight of her feet hitting the ground when she runs, who does not move with grace. Liba, who hungers for Ashkenazic comfort food and wishes to cleave to her Judaism. Liba, who is a little bit of a yenta, and wants to protect her sister Laya from the temptations of non-Jews. Liba, who ultimately accepts what she cannot control when her love for her sister matters more than what she thought was important.

But most of all, I was inspired to write more authentically. To embrace the Yiddish and Hebrew and Aramaic that is part of my own speech, dig into my Torah knowledge for world-building my stories, and let my characters be Orthodox Jews.

Rena Rossner has done something magical with THE SISTERS OF THE WINTER WOOD, and again with her latest release, THE LIGHT OF THE MIDNIGHT STARS. Jewish fantasy, Orthodox characters, and a chance for us to ourselves on the page. That’s magic to me.

Jessica Russak-Hoffman is writing Jewish magic and hanging out in lakes and rivers in the Pacific Northwest. When she is not obsessively listening to Dave Matthews Band, Mumford and Sons, and the History Chicks podcast, she is tweeting about being Jewish, writing, and co-hosting the Kiddush Book Club podcast. You can follow her work at www.jessicarussakhoffman.com.

Color Me In

by: Natasha Diaz

Delacorte, 2019

373 pages

Review by: E Broderick

Some books hurt to read. Some books are so full of raw and powerful emotion they clutch at the hearts of their readers leaving deep claw marks that will scab but never fade. Some books tell truths so pure they make me ugly cry on the subway.

Color Me In is that kind of book.

Following the tale of Nevaeh Levitz as she struggles to process her parents divorce, her belated bat mitzvah and the awkwardness of straddling two worlds, nothing in this book was familiar to me. I have never been to a black Baptist church. I have also never been in a swanky Westchester private school or a reform Synagogue. It is therefore a testament to the power of Diaz’s writing that I was pulled into these worlds seamlessly, effortlessly, from the first page.

As I watched Nevaeh learn to find her voice, even when that means letting someone else take center stage, I could only imagine the pain that comes from never truly knowing where you belong. The push and pull of having two cultures warring inside of you, each one trying to simultaneously claim and disown you all at once.

Diaz does not pull her punches. I was incredibly uncomfortable with Nevaeh’s father and the way he treated her and her mother. I was also incredibly uncomfortable by some of the things Nevaeh’s black cousins said to her. That’s kind of the point. To look at the world as it is and, like Nevaeh, learn to forge a new path within it.

Nevaeh finds her power with help from both sides of her heritage. Her Aunt Anita counsels her that one day she will find the magic within herself, and it is glorious to watch this prophecy unfold. However, Nevaeh cannot fully come into her own without the help of Rabbi Sarah, a woman who came to Judaism by choice and not by birth. These two strong women, and countless others, help Nevaeh become a woman in her own rite as she ascends the stage for her Bat mitzvah.

If this book makes you uncomfortable, if the truth it tells haunts you in the middle of the night, if you are too scared to read it because it shines a light on parts of yourself or your culture that you are afraid to acknowledge then I would suggest you are the person who most needs to read it. I never would have been given a book like this to read. I’m glad I found it on my own. Even if I did get a lot of side eye for ugly crying on the subway.

E Broderick is a speculative fiction enthusiast. When not writing she enjoys epic games of trivial pursuit and baking. She currently lives in the U.S. but is eagerly awaiting the day a sentient spaceship offers to take her traveling around the galaxy.

Anya and the Dragon

by: Sofiya Pasternack

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019

416 pages

Review by: E Broderick

There has been a theft in my home.

The burglar showed remarkable insight and discretion by selecting only one highly prized possession to make off with, my copy of Anya and the Dragon. It’s as if they knew I loved that book so much I read it AFTER I had already listened to the audio book.

Why am I so passionate about Anya and the Dragon? It’s the kind of Book I never got to read when I was in Middle Grade. When I grew up the only age appropriate Jewish literature available to me was the collection in the school library. It mostly consisted of bland stories with formulaic plots that were vehicles to convey heavy handed moral messages. The closest thing to exciting I could get my hands on was The Golem of Prague.

Having finished all the Golem stories and being uninterested in the rest, I turned to the public library. There I found tales of magic and dragons and unicorns and spaceships. I adored them with my whole heart but my child-self understood intrinsically that they were not Jewish. That I could enjoy them, but writing one was forever out of my grasp. Because I was Jewish. I had to write the boring stuff in the school library.

Anya would not have approved.

From the minute I met her, as she struggled with a goat and her lack of magic in the books opening pages, I knew Anya was going places. She was Jewish, gutsy and full of wit. Plus she had a house spirit. The child version of me would have devoured her story. The adult me certainly did.

Let me be clear. Anya’s story is not a tale that lacks Jewish morals. In fact, as Anya struggles to protect the world’s last dragon she faces many ethical dilemmas and she approaches them with a Jewish lens. She also combats antisemitism. However, she does all this while on a rip roaring adventure. Rather than the book suffering for their presence, they enhance the plot.

So why didn’t I do anything to stop the thief and protect this wonderful book? Let me tell you a story of my own.

A few days prior to the criminal incident, I had the Anya and the Dragon audiobook playing out loud to entertain the gaggle of children that can always be found in a large multi-generational Jewish home. One of them slyly looked at me and asked “Is this author Jewish? Because I recognize a lot of this stuff. She’s talking about Shavuot!”

I answered in the affirmative and the kids face glowed. The next day I found that same child surrounded by a pile of papers all covered in large loopy handwriting. I was informed the kids were writing their own book. “Because, Jewish people can be authors.”

The kind of authors that you find in the public library.

The book was stolen by a Jewish day school librarian. She had no idea how much it meant to me but I guarantee I know how much it is going to mean to her students. I can’t wait to see the Jewish magic they create once Anya shows them that it is possible.

It’s a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories

Edited by Katherine Locke and Laura Silverman

Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2019

320 pages

Review: by Lindsey Hewett

Last month, I realized I’d been using a Yiddish word my whole life without realizing it. I was at a Goodwill donation center.

“It’s mostly clothes, but there are some tchotchkes in there, too,” I said to an employee, handing him a garbage bag of stuff.

He paused, his eyebrows knitted together. “What’s…a tchotchke?”

“You know, a tchotchke. It’s a…thing. A decorative thing? Like a little porcelain bird, or umm…a useless bowl…”

He nodded and smiled in confusion as I waved my hands through the air, making a futile attempt to define what’s commonly known as a knick-knack. When I got home and Googled the word, I realized it was Yiddish. And then I felt a pang of guilt.

I didn’t grow up with Yiddish-speaking relatives and I’m not Orthodox, but the language is a huge part of Jewish culture. Why didn’t I know the word’s origins? I’m Jewish, so I should know, right? Granted, I do regularly use other Yiddish words like shtick, schmooze, schlep, nosh, and plotz. But there are plenty I don’t understand. What’s a kvetch? A cholent? Meshuggeneh is super fun to say, but yeah…no idea what it means without Google.

I constantly find myself in this strange place of guilt. A place where, despite my upbringing, I don’t feel “Jewish enough.” Logically, I know this is ridiculous. There’s no litmus test here. But all the same, the guilt nags at me.

That’s why I felt such a strong connection to It’s a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories, a YA anthology of short fiction featuring Jewish teens. Throughout the book, I saw myself reflected on the page. I groaned in sympathy as one character stumbled through telling the story of the Maccabees at a Hanukkah dinner. I clung the book to my heart when I read David Sedaris’ words, “Jewish is tikkun olam, and knowing the world is broken, and wanting to fix it through love and kindness,” a sentiment that has resonated with me since childhood. I laughed at another one of his lines, having said something similar many times: “I can still read Hebrew. As long as there are vowels. As long as you don’t ask me what it means.”

Then I came across stories where I saw no reflection of myself and felt no connection. Like the story of an Orthodox girl nervous about her NYU orientation. Or the story of two best friends at a Jewish convention for teens. I didn’t even know they had those. But as I continued reading, I didn’t feel that familiar pang of guilt.

In fact, it was comforting to immerse myself in the unfamiliarities. Reading variations of the Jewish experience in a condensed format reminded me of how deeply personal and unique Judaism is to each individual (as is any religion or culture). I imagined the book as a glass prism, and each character as a piece of refracted light. The characters and colors were unique, but they were all part of the same, broad spectrum.

It’s okay, I reminded myself. You are who you are, and that is enough. 

Reading this book was validating, but it also left me with questions. Why did I need this kind of validation? Why do I sometimes feel guilty? And why do others feel the same way, as clearly evidenced in parts of the anthology?  I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think it boils down to craving connection. I’m scared that if I’m somehow deficient or come up short, I’ll have a harder time connecting with my Jewish peers.

I often feel alone in my Jewishness. It’s a loneliness I’ve carried since childhood as I was one of two (two!) Jewish kids in my elementary school. The longing to connect with others about my culture and religion has stayed with me as an adult. But there’s good news—this anthology is proof my fears are unfounded. Without spoiling much, none of the characters end up feeling lonely or unworthy (even if they feel that way in the beginning). They all find connection and validation. And yes, they’re fictional, but they’re also realistic. Any Jewish reader can find themselves reflected on the page the same way I did. 

Mayim Bialik sums it up nicely in her forward when she writes, “Jews of all backgrounds need to find a common ground where we all can stand together…there are so many ways to live a Jewish life and feel Jewish.”

I’ll end with a Yiddish word I just Googled: Gevaldik, Mayim. I agree.

Find It: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Lindsey Hewett is a high school English teacher and writer of middle grade fiction. In her free time, she enjoys watching movies, cycling, and scrapbooking. She’s also an avid outdoor enthusiast with an insatiable travel bug. She currently lives in Maine with her husband and labrador retriever. You can follow her on Twitter with the handle @LindsEWrites or on her website at lindseyhewett.com.