UNORTHODOX LOVE

A 29-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman is contending with her last hope for an arranged marriage when new possibilities allow her to hope for something more.

Ten years of bad first dates haven’t stopped Penina Kalish’s matchmaker from trying. Penina herself is stalwart, cajoling herself into meeting the increasingly unimpressive bachelors in public places and attempting to find a nice Orthodox man to marry. With 22,000 Instagram followers hungry for her modest yet sexy outfits each day, a job at a jewelry store, and an offbeat sense of humor, Penina is loath to complain about her predicament. “Maybe G-d was distracted the day He assigned soulmates, and accidentally skipped me,” she thinks. Despite her beauty and kindness, Penina ranks low on the marriageability scale because of her infertility. To Penina and her community, a woman unable to bear children is “missing the most important part of [her] womanhood. Like an ornate jewelry box that’s empty inside.” For that reason, when Penina is set up with a young, handsome, penthouse-dwelling man, she knows there must be a catch, and she’s right. Still, marriage to an affluent man would solve her family’s financial woes and would also help her avoid thinking too hard about Sam Kleinfeld, her secular boss at the jewelry store, and why her heart rate mysteriously doubles when he’s nearby. Penina wonders whether the satisfaction of her family and community is worth the sacrifice of her own happiness. In the time it takes her to decide, she spends more time with Sam, revealing her vulnerabilities and puzzling over his obvious interest in her. A slow burn is to be expected, but Penina’s naïveté turns the reader’s eagerness into impatience as the dim Hanukkah-candle chemistry just keeps burning and burning and burning. Though her community is obviously of central importance to her, Penina’s unquestioning commitment to her religious lifestyle is difficult to reconcile, both with the many obstacles it presents to her happiness and with the more regressive beliefs she asserts—the largely unremarked upon pregnancy of a 14-year-old cousin is difficult to overlook.

A familiar feel-good love story dressed in modest clothing.