The Intimacy Experiment and More Great Jewish Romance Books

Faith Frankel leads a quiet suburban life in her hometown, working for her alma mater and keeping her head down. With her recent purchase of a sweet bungalow on Turpentine Lane, she's ready to settle down, even if her fiancé is off on a crowdfunded cross-country walk and won't return her texts. Everyone has opinions on her life, from her meddling mother to her philandering father to her less-than-useless boss. When she finds some mysterious artifacts in the attic of her new home, she wonders whether anything in her life is as it seems. How much weirder could things get?

Naomi Grant has broken glass ceilings and given a solid two fingers up to the world with her sex-positive start-up. She wants to extend her educational platform to live lecturing, but the cloistered world of higher ed won't let her in. Ethan Cohen is, according to LA Mag, one of the city's hottest bachelors. He's also just been made rabbi of his own synagogue. 

Unfortunately, his shul is low on both funds and congregants. The executive board has given him three months to turn things around and get new, young faces in seats. Naomi and Ethan join forces to host a buzzy seminar series on Modern Intimacy. It'll make him cooler and her more serious. But talking about love so openly with one another cannot help but encourage them both to take the next step.

Lily Goodhue seems like she has everything. She's rich, beautiful a popular socialite, and is engaged to a member of one of New York City's most distinguished families. But Lily is haunted by the ghosts of a childhood tragedy that changed the course of her life. Her parents packed her off to boarding school and all but left her to rot. 

All she wants is someone who will truly understand her. Maybe she'll find that connection with Harry Kohle, an aspiring writer from a venerable banking family.

Isabelle Lira is a woman in a man's world, the head of her late father's joint equity business and the enemy of every male partner at the table. They all want to oust her from her position. Her only choice is to find a husband, one with the clout to help her keep her position. So she’ll host a series of festivals, to which every eligible Jewish man is invited, in the hopes of finding the one. 

Aaron Ellenberg iis the custodian of his local synagogue and doesn't have a penny to his name. But Isabelle makes him an offer he can't refuse: if he helps her to vet the candidates for her future husband, she'll provide him with money for a new life. It's as close as he'll get to the upper echelons of power. After all, heiresses don't marry orphans, right?

Avital Cohen is struggling to keep her family’s kosher bakery, Best Babka in Brooklyn, afloat. It's required her to sacrifice her dreams of a career in photography and to grit her teeth through agonizing chronic pelvic pain. She needs hired help. 

Enter Ethan Lippmann, a gorgeous baker who knows the ropes and makes Avital's heart skip. But Ethan isn't there to work. He's been pushed into going undercover by his grandfather, the scion of the Lippman's kosher goods empire, and find the secret recipes that make Best Babka the best. 

As they bake side by side, Ethan soon finds himself more interested in Avital than in stealing family secrets. It helps that he's oh so good at easing her pain and replacing it with pleasure.

Judith Nachman loves working as a project manager at the Mitzvah Alliance charity, and after five years, it’s finally her turn to have the bat mitzvah of her dreams. The hook? She's being forced to share the day with the hockey player who derailed her sister’s career. 

Now retired, Ash Mendel has hung up his skates and is committed to starting an organization to support Jewish athletes. He just needs to have his own bar mitzvah first. He and Judith may not like another but they do need to exchange a few favors and put aside their differences to survive their big days. 

But what if sharing their B’Nai Mitzvah is a sign that they should also share the rest of their lives together?

Penina wants love and marriage, but as an infertile woman in the Orthodox Jewish community, she's been sidelined as a bad pick for matchmakers. They keep setting her up with older men looking for a second wife. To make things worse, her sister Libby reveals that her husband's business failures have left them close to losing their home. 

Penina is desperate to help, so when a secretly gay Orthodox Jew offers a payout in exchange for a fake marriage, it feels like the perfect solution. It's not like anyone else wants her, right, especially not Sam Klenfeld, her new boss and a gorgeous secular dude who has no desire to be in a relationship. In the battle between following your heart and sticking with what you know, Penina has a tough choice to make.

All Shira Barbanel wants this Hanukkah is a boyfriend. She has the perfect candidate in mind: Isaac, her great-uncle's gorgeous assistant. The only problem? Shira’s an absolute disaster when it comes to flirting and needs a teacher in the ways of love. 

Enter Tyler Nelson, Shira’s former crush and current enemy. He's annoyingly charming and, after the pair are snowed in together over the holidays, he agrees to help teach Shira about flirting. Soon, both of their defenses come down: Shira isn't all that awkward, and Tyler is a sweetheart. But falling for one another wasn't part of the plan.