C
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Theme: Fake Relationship, Holiday
Archetype: Character with a Disability, Jewish
Content warning: Sexism, fatphobia, misogyny, emotional abuse. There are also mentions of food in the book and my review.
This book knocked me sideways with its charm, but nuts and bolts were falling apart for me from the second half. By the end I was infuriated with how some things were mishandled and other fucked up things were shoehorned in. A lot of what’s good about this book was really good, but the things that didn’t work for me downgraded my experience a lot.
Matzah Ball Surprise is about Gaby and Levi who both have Passover blues for different reasons. Gaby is constantly pressured to have a boyfriend by her family. Her mom blames Gaby for being dumped by her toxic and emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, and even encourages Gaby to get back together with him. Levi is having boundary issues with his ex because she wants them to continue pretending to still be engaged so her father will lend her the money she needs to start her business. Levi hates lying, especially to his family, and reenacting the Loving Couple skit for his and his ex’s families had really worn him down. He had already decided to skip Passover at home, so when Gaby, a hot stranger, invites him to come over to her place for Passover as her fake boyfriend…well. In the immortal words of Levi’s friend, “Go. Hot chick. Always hot chick.”
There was a lot I liked about this book, including the style of writing, Gaby and Levi’s personalities, and the humour. Gaby and Levi’s chemistry was sizzling almost from the start, the sex scenes were really hot, and the funny moments and characters’ sense of humour were great. Both Gaby and Levi are Jewish, and Levi is deaf, so I got to learn more about Jewish culture and Deaf culture, which I really enjoyed.
Gaby was well intentioned but imperfect in her interactions with Levi. That was great to see, because she’s a hearing person who has never interacted with people who are Deaf or learned about their culture. It would have been unrealistic for her to magically do all the right things. We get to see Gaby learn instead, which I think is much more valuable than seeing her be a paragon of sensitivity from the beginning. There were also adorkable moments when Gaby and her mom tried to include Levi and make him feel welcomed, but were awkward and unsure of themselves. Levi gives Gaby a leg up not just by educating her on how to interact with him, but also teaching her some American Sign Language (ASL), something he does professionally as a professor in Deaf Studies.
Levi was organized and patient about teaching Gaby, and I really liked that this was a logical part of his character. He wasn’t some Magic Token who just ‘happened’ to have inexhaustible patience, vast knowledge, and knew how to teach. Teaching hearing people how to sign for the first time and knowing what resources would be helpful is part of his job, that he’s trained and experienced in, not something he’s just ‘naturally’ perfect at.
Other Deaf representation in this book includes Levi’s friends, who are also Jewish and Deaf. This story includes both Deaf and hard of hearing people, and shows how their experiences might differ because of this distinction. I loved that Levi wasn’t the only person in his intersection in this story. When Levi is with his Jewish Deaf community or Gaby, we see the nuances of how sign language connects people. There are moments like Gaby struggling to get the correct sign, Levi being cheeky with Gaby, or Levi’s friends being punny, all of which were really fun and fleshed out ASL as its own language and highlighted the intricacies of Deaf culture.
That said, I wish the challenges of a Deaf and hearing couple were explored more. Levi’s best friend kept asking him if he was sure he wanted to date a hearing person. While we see some issues like being in a family gathering where everyone except Levi is hearing, I wish there was also more exploration of why Levi’s friend would be concerned for him.
On the flip side, in Levi’s relationship with Monica, his ex, we see how two people should not be pushed into a relationship together, just because they’re both Jewish and Deaf/hard of hearing. Their families had shoved them together because they had been classmates, and assumed they’d make the perfect pair. What they actually did was pair a floofy dog with a shark. Monica has a take-no-prisoners attitude towards the world and achieving her goals, while Levi only gets hard edged when he feels pushed. Relationships can be hard in the best of times, and the book did a good job showing that sharing key similarities isn’t a promise for a happy ending.
I loved seeing two Jewish-American families celebrate Passover, and how what’s normal in one family may be new to another. For example, Gaby’s family has two cups out, one for Elijah the prophet, the other for Miriam, another prophet. Levi’s family leaves one cup out for Elijah, and he hadn’t learned about Miriam before spending Passover with Gaby’s family. It made my heart happy to not only learn about Jewish culture, but some of the nuances within it.
The long term effects of grief, and how losing a family member you depended on can shape you, is layered beautifully into the story. Gaby had lost her dad a few years ago, and wants her parents’ home to stay just as it was. Her mom, Anne, still lives there, and would change things here and there. It upsets Gaby every time she goes back to see something is now different from how it was when her dad was alive, but she doesn’t want to police how Anne deals with grief.
Besides coping with grief, Gaby is also trying to build herself back up after her toxic and emotionally abusive ex knocked her self esteem. She struggles with her self image, but also with trusting herself and her own decisions. I know lots of Gabies, and I think many women do too: complete babes who are smart and funny that we love to be around, but have a hard time seeing it in themselves. Levi sees this in Gaby as well, but, well, this is where things get gross. Compassionate, emotionally competent Levi has…a saviour complex.
Yup.
It’s every bit as BLAH as it sounds. It was like there was Levi and Evil Levi, and we’re supposed to believe they’re the same person. He keeps talking about how he wants to ‘fix’ Gaby, and the words he used to express that wish were creepy and rage inducing:
Gaby needed to be on a pedestal. She needed a chance to shine and needed to see herself shining. And he knew once he got her up there, he wasn’t letting her down. He’d pick her up to a healthy level and keep her there.
THAT’S NOT HOW ANYTHING WORKS!
Levi also apparently only dated girls who he felt he had to ‘fix,’ and would lose interest in them after he felt like he had done so. He has this whole thing where he wants to figure out what made people “tick,” “flip their switch,” and wave them on in their “happier state.” His ex is the only person who kind of calls him on this. But rather than telling him how fucked up it all was, Monica only points out that Levi’s worried he wouldn’t be interested in Gaby after he “flips” her “switch.”
No one in the book ever checks him on that. They encourage him. Izzy, Gaby’s sister, actually tells Levi that Gaby won’t see her own worth unless Levi “makes her.” Worst of all, Gaby says he “healed” her, which is bullshit on too many levels. Levi is not a licensed therapist, and someone who is will tell you Gaby’s the one who needs to put in the work if she wants to improve her self esteem. At no point in the book do we see Gaby doing this work, or getting support in this area beyond Levi saying nice things to her. GAAAAAAH!
Levi’s fixer mode also comes out when he tries to solve the issue between Monica and her dad. He makes Monica tell her father about her business plans while their families were still celebrating Passover together. As much as Monica’s dad loves her, he is sexist and emotionally abusive. He thinks of her ambition to open her own clothing shop as a “little dream” that can never materialize without a husband to take care of everything for her, and assumes she only cares about what the shop would look like.
It really bothered me that the book made it look like communicating with your emotional abuser is a simple thing, and that sexist beliefs can evaporate in the span of a conversation. An emotionally abusive parent that loves you and you love as well makes for an incredibly complicated relationship, and Monica’s relationship with her dad is further entangled by the power dynamic of his financial power over her ambitions. Monica had been pretending to be a sweet airhead to her dad for who knows how long. A fake fiance had just been the icing. Nothing about her situation or their dynamic suggests a simple conversation would be possible or get Monica the results she wants. Levi didn’t even get them into a private space, just told her to let it all hang out while their families were together in his parents’ living room.
No one in the book ever acknowledged emotional abuse for what it was, even privately, and I wish that wasn’t the case. It’s reasonable for a person to not want to confront their abuser directly, especially when their abuser is also a family member who they love. Realizing an ex partner was abusing you is also incredibly hard. I wish the emotional abuse would have been identified, even if only in some characters’ private thoughts.
Levi was also a dick to Gaby when he pretended not to be Jewish. Like his obsession with ‘fixing’ people, it didn’t fit with how Levi was characterized in the rest of the book and was entirely unnecessary to the story. A lot of Levi’s thoughts and actions throughout the book underscore how thoughtful and caring he is, but then he knowingly adds to Gaby’s mental load during a time he knew to be stressful.
Even though Levi hates lying, because he feels beholden to the promise he made to Monica to keep their pretend relationship going, he shuts down all conversations about his family, and lets Gaby go on assuming he wasn’t Jewish. Gaby, thinking he didn’t know what was happening or what to expect, and knowing he was the only Deaf person there to boot, kept worrying about him, hoping he was okay with the food, didn’t feel too lost or overwhelmed. So there he was, committed to fully supporting Gaby as he watched her struggle under the mental load of trying to be a good daughter while trying to acclimate someone to your culture while coping with her grief WHILE trying to be a good host WHILE it’s a major holiday. And when the ‘secret’ of his identity was resolved, it turns out it didn’t even matter. I found their exchange at best unempathetic, and at worst gaslighty on Levi’s part:
Gaby had missed a couple texts from Levi where he said he was familiar with Passover food, and implying he was Jewish. The focus on the technicality didn’t work for me, because he still chose to lie by omission when it was clear Gaby wasn’t on the same page. Those texts don’t excuse him from knowingly stacking up her stress tower, and insisting that it was Gaby’s fault for not knowing is just aaaaaaaaarrrrgh. It also begs the question that if telling her he was Jewish is no big deal then why didn’t he make himself clear? The whole thing felt like stupid, contrived, unnecessary angst that just made me want to punch Levi.
This was one of the things that made the story start to fall apart for me, and similar types of inconsistencies kept stacking on. Characters would behave inconsistently, acting in ways that contradicted their personalities, and sometimes seemed like they were only there as plot paddles or angst manufacturers.
Then there was an emphasis on “health” that I felt were decidedly the opposite, and I took a hefty umbridge with the way characters described one another.
Exhibit A:
She had a healthy body, not over-worked, not under-worked, and he bet she enjoyed food.
This was Levi’s internal voice describing Gaby’s body. It was only one line, but it was judgy, creepy, and packed with fatphobia and sexism. There are no under-worked bodies, just different fitness levels. I can only tell who loves to eat based on who’s willing to swap food and recipes with me like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards. The idea that there’s a visual ideal for women’s bodies wherein it can’t be too muscular or too big is a shitty one constructed by sexism and capitalism. Instead of indicating that Gaby is his type, it felt like Levi was somehow justifying his attraction. In the Super Scientific Study of Sneezy’s Life, anyone who has ever tried ‘qualifying’ my attractiveness is a pedantic asshole, and Levi is characterized as the opposite of that for most of the book.
It’s also another instance where Levi uses “healthy” to describe what he thinks of as ideal. I feel like there’s this idea of ‘health’ in this book that’s code for acceptable femininity or justification to make Gaby into something her partner likes more. In Gaby’s ex, who was described as a judgmental health nut, it was a negative trait, but it’s supposed to be a good thing when Levi does it? It’s not. Levi doesn’t get to decide what’s a ‘healthy’ pattern of self esteem for Gaby. To conflate the word ‘healthy’ with what someone desires in their partner is toxic. The connotative moral value in the word is used to judge one partner as ‘wrong’ in their ‘unhealthiness,’ while holding up the other partner’s toxic behaviour as somehow just and commendable.
Exhibit B:
Gaby: My Uncle Harry is dating a much younger woman. We call her the new toy. She broke up his marriage, so we weren’t expecting her to be brought for Passover.
We don’t find out if the young woman began dating Harry when he was married, if she chose to date him knowing he was cheating on his wife by getting involved with her, and you know what? None of that matters. Harry was the one married to his ex partner, not his girlfriend. Even if she made bad choices, Harry was the one who broke up his marriage. Referring to a woman as a ‘toy’ outside of consensual, fun kinky times is very misogynistic. Gaby makes a big deal out of trying to tell Levi about each member in her family, their names and quirks, but she doesn’t even mention the woman’s name. The only other time the woman comes up in the book again, she’s still referred to in a variation of ‘Toy,’ and is only there as a prop to how shitty Harry is. For that matter, Harry is the only one named in the soapy triangle.
It wasn’t so much that these lines were in the story as much as they were left unchallenged, and framed as the default. I get that there are people who think and say these things and it’s honest to show it, but there was no suggestion in the text that these things were wrong. It upset me to see fatphobia, sexism, and misogyny reproduced so casually, especially under the guise of ‘morals.’
The ending also felt too abrupt for me. It chopped off right when Gaby and Levi came to an understanding and decided to give dating a shot. It was at the most intense moment of emotional resolution, and the moment didn’t get any room to breathe. I need to wind down with the characters for a story to feel complete to me. Only seeing how the peak resolved wasn’t satisfying. I needed more, especially after all the drama.
The story charmed me from the beginning, but too many aggravating inconsistencies and an unsatisfying ending pulled the story apart for me. There were a lot of toxic ideas that were presented as good or normal, but also a lot of really charming, funny parts I enjoyed the hell out of. I loved that there was a whole community of Deaf and Jewish people, and even when plot paddles were a-paddling, their Deafness and Jewishness were all just parts of them, and not what defined them. The things the book did well on made me want to cuddle with it, and the things it dropped the ball on made me want to rip my eyebrows out. I had a hard time grading it, but all things considered, I think it’s a C for me.
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Thanks!
So much potential. I mean, yay representation, but who thought of that title? “LOOK, JEWS IN LOVE!” would be a little less subtle. You never see Harlequin Inspired titled “JESUS CHURCH HAPPYTIMES.” You know?
end rant, sorry, back to work with me
That sounds incredibly frustrating. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a book that had great potential and then something like that kicked me out. Since I read for fun, it just makes me grumpy.
Great review! I just read this, and I agree with everything you said. Very annoying book.
“Gaby needed to be on a pedestal.”
YIKES. I think it was Gloria Steinem who said that a pedestal is as much a prison as any other small, confined space.
This sucks. I loved the sound of this book but I cannot deal with toxic ideas being presented as normal anymore. Can someone re-write me a book with this exact premise but leave out all the icky parts? That would be so great.
I’d enjoyed the sample and then purchased, but not started reading in depth, so there’s disappointment in hearing the missed potential of the story.
Thank you for reviewing