Can these exes rekindle their love this Hanukkah?

Evelyn Schwartz has the perfect Hanukkah planned: eight jam-packed days producing the live-action televised musical of A Christmas Carol. Who needs family when you’ve got long hours, impossible deadlines, and your dream job? That is, until an accident on set lands her in the medical bay with one of her chronic migraines, and she’s shocked to find her ex-husband, David Adler, filling in for the usual studio doctor.

It’s been two years since David walked away from Evelyn and their life in Manhattan, and his ex-wife is still the same workaholic who puts her career before everything else—especially her health. But when Evelyn begins hallucinating “ghosts” tied to her past heartbreaks, and every single one leads to David, he finds himself spending much more time with her than he anticipated. And denying the still-smoldering chemistry between them becomes impossible.

As Evelyn revisits her ghosts of Hanukkah past, she and David both begin to wonder if they can have a Hanukkah future. But with a high-stakes production ramping up the pressure on Evelyn, and troublesome spirits forcing them both to confront their most difficult shared memories, it might just take a Hanukkah miracle for these two exes to light the flame on their second-chance at love.

Every holiday season, I try to branch out from the usual Christmas-centered books, and picking up this one turned out to be a great choice. This story hits that perfect mix of funny, emotional, clever, and heartfelt, and it does something fresh with a holiday theme without losing any of the comforting charm I love this time of year.

Right away, the theatrical setting hooked me. I’m a sucker for any story that involves backstage chaos, rehearsals, green rooms, last-minute disasters, and all the weird magic that happens in live performances. Setting the book during rehearsals for a televised musical version of A Christmas Carol was already fun, but the twist of turning that classic Christmas tale into a Hanukkah-inspired journey for our main character made it even better. It feels playful while still carrying emotional weight, and it gives the whole book a fresh angle that doesn’t feel gimmicky at all.

Evelyn Schwartz is deeply committed to her job and determined to prove herself, even if it means steamrolling her own wellbeing. She’s juggling impossible deadlines, creative expectations, production drama, and her own chronic migraines. And then one bad fall on set lands her in the medical bay… where she comes face to face with her ex-husband, David, who’s filling in as the studio doctor.

Their history is complicated and painful. David walked away from their marriage without a goodbye, and the book doesn’t sugarcoat the hurt that caused. What makes this story work, though, is how deeply the author dives into both characters’ perspectives. Instead of leaning on misunderstandings or cheap conflict, the book lets us see exactly how their lives unraveled the first time around. It also shows how grief, ambition, fear, and miscommunication chipped away at what was once a very real and loving relationship.

Enter the ghosts. Instead of Scrooge-style spirits guiding someone through three phases of their life, Evelyn is visited by eight ghosts representing her eight heartbreaks—one for each night of Hanukkah. These ghosts force her to confront her past, her choices, her fears, and especially her unresolved feelings about David. This structure is not only clever but deeply effective. It gives the story rhythm. It adds humor. And it makes the emotional beats land just right.

Their relationship is honestly the strongest part of the book. You feel why these two were good together once, and you understand why it all went wrong. Watching them work toward clarity, forgiveness, and maybe something like hope was incredibly satisfying.

That said, Evelyn occasionally got on my nerves. I liked her overall, and her ambition is admirable, but her emotional shifts toward David sometimes felt way too abrupt. She swung from furious to tender in the blink of an eye, and the number of scenes where she just yelled at him got old fast. Conflict doesn’t need to be loud to be effective. I wished some of those moments had been handled with quieter tension rather than constant volume. It didn’t completely ruin anything for me, but it did affect the way I felt toward her and it did nudge my rating down a bit.

Overall, the emotional payoff is strong, the humor lands, the heartbreak is effective, and the creative approach to reworking a holiday classic worked very well. It’s a story about heartbreak, yes, but it’s also healing. And that’s exactly the kind of holiday narrative I Iove. If you want something festive that isn’t strictly Christmas, this is a fantastic pick. It hit every note I hoped it would.