Title: Two Nights to Forever (Orchard Hill #2)
Author: Rebecca Crowley
Date of publication: 11 April 2022
Genre: Contemporary romance, Jewish romance
Author's links:
My rating: 4 stars
Blurb
Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but love just might…
Eve Klein almost has it all: a thriving career, great friends, and adoptive parents who’ve supported her in everything—including her quest to find her birth mother. She’s hired a private investigator, and while she waits for the last piece of her history to make her whole, she focuses on the most exciting deal of her career—a controlling share in Keller and Sons, a luxury watchmaker.
To most people Keller watches are status symbols, but to Saul Keller they’re handcuffs. He thought his brother had everything under control, until a distress call from an employee forced him to leave Wall Street and move home to Orchard Hill, Missouri. A year on, he’s shifted from trying to save the family business to selling it—and finally setting himself free.
Eve is Saul’s most exciting—and alluring—professional adversary, and he’s exactly the type of high-flyer she’s sworn to stop falling for. But when she needs his help to prepare for a Passover seder with her birth mother, the lines between business and pleasure become perpetually blurred.
Review
This is another cozy romance by an author whose books I generally enjoy and this one was very soothing for me to read in rough times.
This is contemporary romance with two Jewish MCs who are not very strict in practicing their religion but still observe the Jewish holidays and traditions in one form or another.
Eve is someone who longs to belong and to be loved (carrying the trauma of being given up for adoption at birth); Saul is struggling to find his place in the family business, feeling left out/unwanted. I loved seeing both MCs finding their footing, discovering who they are and what they want in life.
The focus in the story was very much on the internal struggle of fitting in, of being confident in your choices and I found it all very relatable. Both Eve and Saul were successful in their profession, had great loving families but still a sense of lack and loss and something missing.
There was strong chemistry between them right from the start but their professional relationship and current life goals made it nearly impossible to be together. The romance was passionate and tender with underlying strong friendship, understanding, admiration for the achievements of the other.
The story came off as a bit heteronormative and traditional with a focus on family. I wished we saw Eve's adoptive parents on page, not only hearing her praise for them. Focusing only on her relationship seeing her birth mother and her new family felt odd to me.
It's a happy making story, low conflict, offering an overly optimistic world view but I didn't mind it. I was happy with the accents in the business aspect - support of local community, women-led business, ethical business practices.
CW: adoption, difficult relationship with birth mother, bullying in school (in the past)
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