Mr. Perfect on Paper

Magical Meet Cute

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’m a big Jean Meltzer fan. (If you haven’t been reading my blog for a while, don’t worry. Click here to read my post about Ms. Meltzer’s debut novel, The Matzah Ball. Click here to read my thoughts about her second novel, Mr. Perfect on Paper. And click here to read some of my favorite passages from her third novel, Kissing Kosher.)

And if you have been reading my blog for a while, you also know I don’t usually read books right when they’re published, simply because everyone else is. I like to wait a bit, until the hoopla has settled down. Then, I select the book from the large number of to-be-read-books I currently own. I read the book and post about it here on my blog and on my Instagram. (If you’re not already following me there, why not?)

My system allows me to show the author some love and attention when they’re in-between books and perhaps aren’t being discussed and celebrated like they were immediately upon publication. 

Ms. Meltzer’s fourth novel, Magical Meet Cute (published in August 2024), was not your standard rom-com. The book’s main character is Faiga Kaplan (Faye to her friends), a Jewitch potter living in Woodstock, New York. And while there most definitely is a romance aspect to the story, the book also confronts the ugliness and the reality of blatant anti-Semitism. 

There is so much to say about this book, about Faye and Greg. Allow me to share some of my favorite passages:

“Greg caught on the word. ‘Home.’
“ ‘The place where you belong. The place where people love you.’
“Home felt like Faye.”  (I love this definition of home!)

“Greg didn’t see her broken bits as flaws. If anything, it was the opposite. She was like that one vase in the store she had hidden behind the fancier and more elaborate-looking Seder plate. She saw herself as warped and damaged, undeserving of love and attention. Yet it was all the bubbles in her clay memory, the scratches and scars … that made her unique.”

“And, at the end of the day, none of that making herself smaller mattered. Because nothing about what these people had done to her, chosen for her, was fair. Or right.
“Just like it had never, ever been her fault.
“But she was exhausted from a lifetime of making other people feel comfortable. And suddenly, she was done. Straight-up finished with all these less than deserving people arriving to her shoreline. Damn the silence. Damn the consequences. She was ready to live her life without constantly interrupting herself to say that she was sorry.”

“She gave others what she had always needed from them — love and affection, security and protection, a place to land when things got bad — while never demanding the same for herself.”

“We can hold on to memory, bear the things that shape us, but also … write our own story going forward.”

“ ‘You want the truth about settling down, Greg?’ Tom asked. ‘About spending the rest of your life with one woman, raising a family … about giving up the adventure sometimes, just for a quiet boredom?’ “
“ ‘Yeah.’
“ ‘It’s awesome,’ Tom said.
“Greg laughed.
“ ‘I’m serious,’ Tom said, his whole face turning red as he spoke. ‘Every single day, I wake up and go to bed with my best friend in the world. When i’m having a hard day — shit, when I needed neck surgery — she’s there for me. When I’m having a good day, when I want to watch a game or a movie on Netflix with the kids, there’s no one I would rather spend time with more than her. It’s not just that she busts my chops, or has fun with me, or makes me better … it’s that I can’t imagine how there was ever a me without her’.” 

“It was the most remarkable type of magic — falling in love, finding your person, crafting your own life, writing a story where you deserved to be valued.”

FYI – Ms. Meltzer’s fifth novel, The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah, will be available on October 21st. You can pre-order a signed copy now.  

Please note: I am including a link to buy the book that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.



Kissing Kosher

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

Here’s what you should know about Kissing Kosher by Jean Meltzer.

It’s a rom-com. A delightful rom-com.

But even more than that — the protagonist, Avital Cohen, happens to be a Jewish woman who lives with a chronic illness and chronic pain. And for that I applaud Ms. Meltzer. (I have written about Ms. Meltzer’s first two books in previous blog posts, which you can read here and here.)

While the rom-com was fun to read and provided me with a fantastic escape from real life, it was the very real, very relatable aspects of Avital’s chronic illness that I most resonated with. 

Here are just a few of the passages I marked with sticky notes:

“She got used to disappearing into the ceiling while doctors poked and prodded. That was the funny thing about chronic pain. It didn’t disconnect her from her body. Instead, it made every single second of her life about her body. She couldn’t escape the never-ending reminders of her pain if she tried.”

“Like many folks dealing with the onset of chronic illness, she had hope — this great and unfettered optimism — that she would one day wake up normal again if she could just find the right treatment.
“There was no cure. While some of the treatments helped, nothing completely eradicated the constant ache she lived with. There were bad days and better days, but rarely did she experience pain-free days.
“Despite all her best efforts to win the war against her own failing body — despite the fact that she was trying not to make her disease her identity — she kept getting worse. Some nights, the fear that accompanied the realization that nothing she did was working was more awful than the pain itself.”

“People always say, Don’t make your disease your identity. And you know what, Josh? I hate that statement. I think it’s the most ableist thing I’ve ever heard. The very definition of chronic is that it’s every day. It’s something I will have to negotiate, and manage, for the rest of my life. It touches everything.”

“But mainly, the most important thing I’ve realized is that if I’m going to be in pain the rest of my life, then it’s even more important that I hold on to my joy. I need to create the life that makes me happy. So that when the bad days come, because they will keep coming, Josh … they don’t hurt me as much.”

Please note: I am including a link to buy the book that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.

Mr. Perfect on Paper

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

There aren’t many books written by an author who has earned a daytime Emmy, “and spent five years in rabbinical school before her chronic illness forced her to withdraw.” 

That author is Jean Meltzer.

(You might remember I raved about Ms. Meltzer’s first novel, The Matzah Ball, in a blog post from several months ago. Click here if you missed it.)

And as was the case in her first novel, Ms. Meltzer’s second book also features a main character who is a Jewish woman living with an invisible chronic illness. 

The book is Mr. Perfect on Paper. The character is Dara Rabinowtiz.  

Mr. Perfect on Paper was such an enjoyable read. Smart, funny, heartfelt. Plus, it gave readers a chance to learn about Jewish holidays in an easy-to-understand manner. Most of all, it gave us characters we cared about.

Here are a few of the passages I marked during my reading:

“He beamed as he entered, a bounce in his step, offering a hearty good morning to each person he passed. He was a champ at this. Faking it. Looking happy. Smiling through whatever pain was threatening to drown him.”

“There were days when Dara was so exhausted from her struggles that she could barely find the courage to get out of bed. It was then that her mother would show up, standing over her — and sometimes tearing off her covers — demanding that she fight. Fight, Dara. Her mother would repeat it like a mantra on her bad days. You’re allowed to be afraid, you’re allowed to be anxious, but you have to fight.” 

“There isn’t one way to be Jewish,” she said, finally. “Some people are very observant. Some people aren’t. Some people fall in the middle of the spectrum, or have different philosophies behind the reasons for their observance. Some people don’t do anything. When two Jews marry, they have to negotiate these religious choices. For example, will they keep a kosher home? Will they observe Shabbat? Will you cover your hair, or go to mikvah? Those are some of the big ones…”

“But,” Dara said thoughtfully, “you learn to live with it. The sadness never goes away. Maybe it never gets smaller, either. But after a time, you learn to hold both. You learn that joy still exists … there’s still laughter, and falling in love, and —“ she smiled, glancing down at the crumbs of her pizza “—there’s still jalapeño-and-pineapple pizza. You learn that good things still happen. You meet someone. You fall in love. Maybe you even get married. And when you walk down that aisle, you hold both. You hold the joy of the moment alongside your sadness for the one who can’t be there.” 

“But what I learned from this journey, from finding my real-life Mr. Perfect on Paper, is that love isn’t something that can be quantified on a list. Love is messy. And terrifying. It shows up when you least expect it, and complicates your life in every way. But it’s also … safe. And comforting. It allows you to be yourself completely, without judgment or fear, and it feels right. I don’t know how something so incredibly scary can also feel right, but I need to give this inkling in my heart —in my soul—a chance.”

“I know you think…because you have anxiety, that you’re not brave. But that’s not true. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, actually, and here’s what I want to tell you. Courage ins’t about jumping out of airplanes or building businesses from scratch. Real courage is showing up, even when you’re afraid. Real courage is putting yourself out there, even when you fail — especially when you fail. Courage is saying, this is who I am, standing up, allowing yourself to be vulnerable. And you are brave, Dara. You’re the bravest person I have ever met.”