Shira Glassman

Content warnings: identity theft, overuse of dialogue tags

This is a quick, cute, fluffy romance. It is so adorable, I kept giggling as I read it. The meet-cute is cute and the main characters are so sweet, yet they seem like real people - I would like to meet them! Can I be friends with Clara and Danielle?? Also, if you're a involved in online fandom, there are some things that you'll probably recognize as funny fandom jokes such as a mention of a movie called My Immortal *snicker* but they're generally subtle enough that they won't get in the way of the story for non-fandom readers.

Thoroughly recommended if you're in the mood for a quick, fun read.… (meer)

Four and a half to five stars. Parts of this book were absolutely adorable, and what an adventure all around! How creative the traps, plans, and progress was, too. It was an absolute delight and so validating to have both main characters be Jewish, and outright -say the names of holidays-, and ones besides Hanukkah. Purim is mentioned via the Book of Esther, and Shulamit claims Rivka wants the story read again so she can make silly noises when the villain's name is mentioned. I laughed for about five minutes at that, both tickled by the humor and delighted to see myself represented. I made shriek-y quacking noises one year during the reading. Often in books and media, Jewish characters are alluded to. More accurately, they're the funny, quirky sidekicks who shriek about how they're barely Jewish. Lots of screeching about how it's on their dad's side so it doesn't count. I know the meaning behind the particular phrase and can sit down and talk to you about it, and it is beyond the scope of this review. The characters doing the screeching cannot. Come to think of it, I've never actually known of an author who was Jewish, who wrote the shrieking stereotypes. (pointed stare) I hate it. But here, in this book, the two main characters were observant Jewish, front and center. No over-explaining about anything was present. They didn't have to pretty much justify their Jewishness or Judaism, as I've often read in other books. They just were, and they were and it was important, and that was that

Shulamit has what is coded as celiac disease or maybe Crohn's. So, a chronically ill character, too! And she's openly gay! Seeing myself represented on the page in so many ways, unapologetically, was beyond wonderful. The names Glassman picked for her characters are actual Hebrew girl names. This was not a fantasy book with Westernized coding and names, which is so common, I could gag. No, this was a fantasy book that allowed Hebrew and Yiddish-speakers to...exist. How simultaneously soothing and empowering! I liked watching the friendship between Shulamit and Rivka develop. They balanced out one another. I handwaved and got used to entire chapters being backstory due to how they were introduced: the previous chapter's ending sentence indicated there would be a lot of information. In the world Glassman set up, and the structure of this novel, this worked. The ending fit neatly, and that's hard to do in some fantasy books. I was pleased to find out this book even has a sequel.… (meer)