Review: "Soon by You" by Dahlia Adler

Soon by You by Dahlia Adler
Published May 2025 via St. Martin's Griffin
★★★★

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride—and Arielle is fine with that, for now. She's not ready to settle down. But in her modern Orthodox community, young marriage is the norm (not least because there are a whole host of restrictions on what you can do with the opposite sex before marriage), and her friends are all pairing off, and she finds it easiest to keep things no-strings. That is...until a very buttoned-up wedding singer comes into the picture, and no-strings gets more complicated.

Adler's books are a delight, and this is no exception. In many ways this is a standard romance novel (enough so that I hesitated before picking it up, because Adler's queer books are my favourite, and the primary romance here is heterosexual), but with the not insignificant twist that the characters are almost all observant, Modern Orthodox Jews. This means: keeping kosher; keeping Shabbat (no work, no electronics, etc., from Friday evening to Saturday evening); men not listening to women sing; observing a whole host of different holidays that I know little about; and—for some of them—no touching the opposite sex. Now...this is a very steamy romance; some of the characters are more observant than others about who they will and won't touch (and some are more observant than others about whose music they will listen to, for that matter). The concept of a tefillin date sent me, because...well, of course in every religion that has more than one follower, there will be differences in belief and practice, but I haven't given all that much thought to what that might look like in Modern Orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, the relationship is doing interesting things. Arielle has a reputation, and it doesn't bother her—she knows what she wants, she knows her boundaries, she knows who her friends are, and she knows that the right guy will take her as she is. So when she and Judah have reservations about the possibility of a future, it's not really because of either of them not knowing what they want; it's because they haven't worked out (alone or together) how they can make their visions for the future align. And, well, there are some other complications along the way, but by and large we have a heroine who knows exactly who she is and what her limits are and a hero who is still figuring himself out but knows enough to respect the hell out of the heroine's autonomy. Plus, really genuinely interesting discussions about individual interpretations of religion and related choices.

I would have liked to know more about Arielle's job. (I applied for a job like that once; I still regret that I never got an interview, because I would have killed the interview and probably excelled at the job.) And also would not mind *cough* a bonus scene that takes place after the end of the book...although on the whole I really can't complain. Someday I will finish making it through Adler's backlist, and that will be a sad day until her next book comes out.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.