Eight Nights Of Flirting

Set on Nantucket, Hannah Reynolds’ Eight Nights of Flirting, is a companion book to her previous novel, The Summer of Lost Letters, which also dealt with family mysteries and Jewish history in Nantucket. I knew absolutely nothing about the Jewish history of Nantucket and was fascinated by how Reynolds wove it into the plot in the first novel, so I was eager to read Eight Nights of Flirting and was confident I’d be in good hands. I listened to the audiobook while I was in my hometown for an early family Thanksgiving, which was also a celebration of my grandmother’s 100th birthday. It was the perfect time to read a Hanukkah romcom about a big Jewish family coming together for the holidays to celebrate milestones and heal old wounds.

Shira Barbanel has always sucked at flirting, but she’s got a target in her great-uncle’s assistant Isaac, who’s coming to her family home in Nantucket for the holidays. That gives Shira the motivation and the urgency – desperation, really – to ask for flirting lessons from the unlikeliest of candidates: her first big crush, Tyler, when they have an unplanned and unchaperoned sleepover due to inclement weather. Tyler, in exchange, wants an introduction to Shira’s great-uncle for internship purposes. Of course, Shira and Tyler find more than they bargained for when their flirting lessons bring them closer, and Shira must decide what and who she really wants. Shira’s dilemma is underlined by her discovery of a mysterious potential doomed love affair in the Barbanel family history, and her grandparents’ strained marriage (for more on that, you’ll need to read The Summer of Lost Letters).

It was viscerally painful to listen to Shira describe her confession of love to Tyler when she was fourteen and he was sixteen, but it made the burgeoning romance between Shira and Tyler that much more earned when they did get there. Shira’s awkwardness coming off as standoffish was deeply relatable, and I enjoyed how their relationship developed as they got to know each other better. I love a story about a crush going from projection of an unattainable ideal to a real, flawed person that you like in all their imperfections, and Reynolds did a good job of showing how Shira and Tyler both let down their guard and truly got to know each other throughout the course of the story.

This was an interfaith romance that didn’t belabor the issue, perhaps because the characters are young – Tyler is a freshman in college and Shira is still in high school (I didn’t love that, tbh, but I get it – for Shira to be too young for him when she has her big crush makes total sense. Also, Isaac was 19, and maybe I am old and square, but should these college boys be making out with high school girls?!? Why couldn’t both boys be 18-year-old HS seniors? But even with that quibble, I was invested in Shira’s romantic evolution). The challenge presented by interfaith marriage is touched upon more through the historical mystery aspects of the story, but it never gets heavy-handed. It also sets up the conflict of going after what you think you “should” want/what is expected of you vs. going with your heart, though that is not limited to the characters’ religions, but also their career and college goals and who they want to be in the world. Tyler not being Jewish makes a convenient entry point for readers who are unfamiliar with Jewish practices, since it sets Shira up to explain what may be unclear to a non-Jewish reader, making the story accessible to a wider audience.

This is a very sweet book to be snowed in with. I was invested in Shira and Tyler’s romance, as well as the family mystery. I loved Shira’s boisterous family and the emphasis on Hanukkah over Christmas. And I will definitely read whatever Hannah Reynolds writes next.

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Melissa Baumgart is the 2018 winner of the Katherine Paterson Prize from Hunger Mountain Journal for the Arts for her young adult short story, “Don’t Quote Me.” (https://hungermtn.org/dont-quote-me/) She has written about film for Bright Wall/Dark Room, We Are the Mutants, and Crooked Marquee. Melissa has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts