Kissing Kosher

In this riff on Romeo and Juliet, Avital Cohen’s life isn’t going according to plan. Bogged down by chronic pain and her job as the general manager of Best Babka in Brooklyn, the Instagram-popular bakery that has been in her family for five generations, she hires Ethan Rosenberg as her assistant. The catch? Avital doesn’t know that Ethan is actually the heir to Lippman’s bakery, the longtime rival to Best Babka, and is working undercover to steal the recipe for the Cohens’ famed pumpkin-spice babka. Meltzer’s excellent writing transports readers to the rich, lived-in world of Best Babka in Brooklyn, which features a host of multidimensional secondary characters. She deftly weaves both Jewish culture and Avital’s chronic illness into this poignant, brutally honest story and does an excellent job of tackling serious topics while still getting Avital and Ethan to their well-earned happily-ever-after. There is also a significant medical and recreational cannabis subplot that feels both natural and necessary to the storyline.