Book One: Made from Scratch
Twenty-five-year-old Adina Halpern knows two things: how to run a patisserie, and how to survive a bad shidduch date. What she doesn’t know is how to handle Gavi Wechsler, who sits across from her at a speed dating event, makes her feel seen for the first time in years, and promptly tells her not to bother saying yes.
Gavi isn’t looking for romance. After growing up in a house where love curdled into resentment, and years of volunteering with Kesher — an organization supporting boys from broken homes — he’s convinced that romance is just a pretty veneer over something rotten. But when circumstances keep throwing him and Adina together at a baking workshop for the Kesher boys, he keeps saying no. And he keeps coming back anyway.
What follows is a push and pull of rejected dates and reluctant yeses, of almost-touches in flour-dusted kitchens and arguments that crackle with something neither of them wants to name. When their engagement implodes under the weight of everything they haven’t said, Adina has to decide whether real love can ever live up to the movies she’s measured her whole life against and Gavi has to figure out whether the romance he’s spent years dismissing might be the only thing worth fighting for.