Book 777: Ben’s Bakery and the Hanukkah Miracle – Penelope Peters

If you want to know how to piss me off when it comes to a book put the setting in Boston but don’t do your research and don’t have the book copy edited or proofread. That’s a guarantee to piss me off. This could’ve easily been a 4.5-star book because of the hilarious hockey kids trying to be matchmaker for their coach, but nope.

I apparently put this on hold when I was in the middle of my 12 Books of MM Holiday Romance binge, but forgot about it until I was notified on January 3 it was available. I went ahead and read it as I’m making my way through Timothy C. Winegard’s fascinating tome The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, because let’s face it as fascinating as it is, that book is dense as hell.

Ben’s Bakery and the Hanukkah Miracle is a bit of a mess. It starts out with a great premise but seems to get lost wandering the streets of Cambridge/Boston and trying to figure out if it wants to pontificate about Judaism or embrace multi-culturalism. The protagonists are Ben, a baker seeking to find his Jewish identity whose speed skating injury kept him from returning to the rink, and Adam, a rabbi’s son who could’ve gone pro in the NFL, but didn’t because of a car accident that killed his mother and seriously debilitated his father.

Adam comes to Cambridge with his peewee hockey team for a tournament and sparks fly when a few of the players stumble into Ben’s bakery and realize it’s a Jewish bakery and tell Adam later that day.

‘Stop. Which happened first, nearly getting arrested, or getting the donuts for free?’
‘Um? Arrested? I think? And then the guy behind the counter said the donuts were free, so we didn’t need to be arrested,’ said Pierre. ‘They were really good donuts. You get a free one, too, if you’re a new international customer. You should go. The guy was cute.’
‘Pierre,’ hissed Francois.
‘He was! And Coach is single! He could ask him out after he gets his free donut.’
‘That is so crass. He has to buy the donut if he’s going to date the guy. Otherwise he just looks cheap.’
‘Agreed,’ said Farida, clearly amused.
‘If he’s going to date the guy, he should be getting the donuts for free anyway.’ (17)

That’s so it tastes better when you kiss good-night! shouted the chorus of pint-size hockey players at the back of his head. Adam ignored them. (48)

‘Sunday,’ said Tom, irritable and impatient. ‘I’m in Boston, I’m Canadian, and your president is an asshole.’ (214)

Honestly, I wasn’t lying when I said the best part of the novel were the kid’s Adam coaches on the peewee hockey team. See above for just a taste. I mean they’re obnoxious, but they’re really what you can imagine the next generation being like when it comes to LGBTQ+ interactions. They just want their coach to be happy and don’t mind embarrassing him to push him out there.

The sex scenes were realistic if oddly spaced throughout the novel. The most believable one was the fumbling first one in the kitchen of the bakery. It just worked the best. I’m not sure why Peters decided to “fade to black” for the middle sex scene, but whatever it worked. The epilogue one was just gratuitous and the book would’ve been fine without it.

The crisis of the novel was between Adam’s inability to see Ben as anything other than looking for a Jewish tutor and Ben’s fear of ice skating. The first didn’t really work other than to make Adam look like an ass and the second worked, but wasn’t really resolved in the end. I’d rather have seen them go ice skating a year later in the Common than banging in the August heat, but oh well.

Now for what REALLY made me mad about the novel. Neither of these approached the issues around Boston I had with Vivian Schilling’s Quietus or the editing/proofreading issues with Arden O’Keefe’s It’s a Steal, but it was not good and frankly, I was disappointed that my library had this in its catalogue with how poorly edited it is.

“I propose ice skating on the Green. Great first date.” (26)

“Even living alone, it seemed wrong to turn on every single light against the darkness of early morning.” (57)

“There was a brisk wind coming off the Charles, enough that Ben’s nose was numb when they finally descended into the T station. Adam fumbled with his token, but they caught a train easily enough, and it wasn’t horrifically crowded either.” (112)

I’m not sure if Peters has ever visited Boston/Cambridge, let alone lived in either. Maybe she visited it once a few decades ago, but no. There were just things that anyone who has spent more than 6 months here should know.

• Like as far as I’m aware no one refers to the Common as “the Green”, I mean sure it is the green, the common land upon which early citizens grazed their cattle, but no one refers to it as that. It’s either the Garden (The Public Garden) or the Common (Boston Common and most definitely NOT the Commons or Boston Commons). She also refers to it as a dinky little thing, and the skating rink is surprisingly large and I don’t know how you can mention it without talking about it being the Frog Pond?
• A struggling baker can absolutely NOT afford to live by themselves in Central Square, even if it is a little apartment above their bakery. Not a chance. Honestly, this was probably the most unbelievable aspect of the novel.
• The MBTA tokens were discontinued in 2006 and were no longer accepted starting in 2012—at least FIVE years before this book takes place. I remember this, because I was here in Boston and VERY confused about what they were talking about because I’d never heard of them. If you really want to know more check out this Wikipedia page on the Charlie Card.
• No one refers to Boston University as “University of Boston” or “Boston U”, both of which Peters used in this book. It’s Boston University or BU—that’s it. She would’ve been better off following Ukazu’s lead from #Hockey and Sticks & Scones and creating a new college up here, I mean there are 45+ institutes of higher education in greater Boston (Wikipedia link), why not make up one more?

And then there was the actual editing/proofreading of the book. Peters made a big deal about not writing out the word God in the front matter and respect for that, but whoever edited it didn’t catch the French reference on page 160 (“Mon Dieu”). I mean it’s not a big deal, but it is the same thing and because it’s capitalized, it’s clearly God and not a generic god.

The other big error that really got me was a continuity error from one page to the next in which Adam is being offered a coaching position with either a team in Quincy, MA or Hartford, CT from which the above Mon Dieu also comes from. However, immediately turning the page Peters refers to the team as “the major-minor league team for Detroit.” and I was confused AF. I had to re-read the three pages before it to make sure I hadn’t missed something because that was kind of a big miss when the entire conversation hinges on whether Adam will try to stay in Boston to be with Ben. So yeah, pay for a proofreader and/or copy editor, if you don’t your readers will be abruptly pulled out of one of the most intense scenes of the book and just be like WTF?

I’m VERY glad I didn’t highlight every other grammar/spelling/proofreading error or I would be even more frustrated than I am. That being said, I did highlight this one:

He pushed himself up again, and let out a cry, every nerve coming fulling awake. (234)

If there was ever, a place to quadruple check EVERY SINGLE WORD, it’s a sex scene. This was another one that jarred me out of a scene because it wasn’t caught. I didn’t think the scene needed to be there, but I was still invested only to find that error at the climax (yeah pun intended). Again, just pay for a proofreader/copy editor it is absolutely worth it in my opinion.

There was an electric hanukkiah in the window, and it still had only one light on it. (42)

I’ll end on a high note though, I did learn something from this book. At first, I thought hanukkiah was a typo, but looked it up because Hanukkah didn’t make sense in the sentence. I found that a hanukkiah is different from a menorah in the number of candles they have and the one we usually see (nine candles) is actually the hanukkiah!

Recommendation: If poor proofreading bothers you, I’d say pass. The book wasn’t very well proofread/copy edited and it definitely distracted from the story. Personally, I was bothered by the weird Boston issues, but most people wouldn’t notice. I’m sad it wasn’t better than it was because I liked the premise and the hockey kids were hilarious and Ben and Adam had so much potential!

Opening Line: “It was one week after Thanksgiving on a balmy October day when Adam Barnard told his pee-wee hockey kids that they’d been invited to the annual Winter Classic Tournament in Boston that year.”

Closing Line: “‘Yeah,’ said Adam, as if he was realizing this for the first time, ‘I think I am.'” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from Ben’s Bakery and the Hanukkah Miracle
“‘You know him?’ Adam asked Ben.
‘Most of the time,’ admitted Ben grudgingly. ‘He’s the local Harvard business school [sic] drop-out.’
‘Not true,’ said Sheldon. ‘I am not the local Harvard business school drop-out, there are many local Harvard business school drop-outs. Also I never dropped out.'” (25)

“‘I don’t want to be your Jewish fling, okay?’ snapped Adam.
Ben went stiff.
Adam exhaled. ‘I get that you’re trying to find your religious and cultural roots, but I’m not the one to show them to you. I’m sorry.'” (55)

“It’s Jewish because you made it, was what Nana had said when Ben had first asked about ‘real Jewish recipes.’ You think whoever came up with blinis and bialys and bagels came up with the recipes wanting to make a real Jewish food? Of course not! They made them because they tasted good, and the bakers just happened to be Jewish. That’s it.” (57)

“‘They speak French in Canada, too,’ said Ben, thinking of the boys who chattered away in French, and their dark-haired coach who could probably whisper extremely dirty things in French into Ben’s ear if he’d wanted. Ben wouldn’t have complained.” (59)

“Pretty sure the Big Guy doesn’t care how you celebrate the holiday, as long as you remember He’s the one behind it. That’s kind of what all religions boil down to, isn’t it? Be good to one another, and remember Me?” (196)