Matched
MATCHED
Imagine Fiddler on the Roof with more kissing . . . and assassins. Like 500 percent more assassins and medical students.
Sometimes an unemployed assassin decides you need to read this book . . .
The energy and emotion, the instant need, it jumped off the page.
-Advanced reviewer Marnie
On the auspicious occasion of her eighteenth birthday, Noah Bornstein’s mother started hinting that it was time for her to get married.
On the auspicious occasion of her nineteenth birthday, Nora Borenstein’s mother told her she needed to search for a husband.
On the auspicious occasion of her twentieth birthday, Nora’s mother had only one questions—did you find a husband while you were away? She hired a matchmaker for Nora.
On the auspicious occasion of her twenty-first birthday, Nora’s mother was completely desperate and suggested Nora start drinking more often at the local Jewish Hillel house.
One would have thought that Nora was living in a regency romance novel where she needed to be matched with Duke/Viscount/Lord so-and-so, who would have her stay home and have their many children. Nora knew such a thing existed because she’d snuck out of Hebrew School and visited the public library where she read about such things.
However, this was not Regency England. It was the twenty-first century, and Nora was an Orthodox Jew who simply wanted to become a doctor.
She got it. Her four older sisters were married before they turned twenty, and they were already happily creating a never-ending conveyor belt of glorious Jewish grandbabies. Nora wasn’t opposed to the idea of those Jewish grandbabies, but they didn’t need to be right now. Medical school would take up a huge amount of time and energy. Finding a husband was lower on her list of priorities.
Undeterred, Ruth Borenstein waited until her youngest daughter moved back from University of Michigan to attend Cleveland College of Medicine. She patiently invited a large assortment of characters to the weekly Friday night Shabbat dinner, who were a dazzling array of potential suitors for first-year medical student Nora.
“Welcome, welcome,” Ruth waved in this week’s Shabbat visitors. In came Nora’s childhood acquaintance, third-year medical student Judah Weiss, and his parents.
“Great to see you,” Nora said, darting her eyes between the faces of the newcomers.
“Oh, we’re so glad you could come,” Ruth proclaimed. “It has been an eternity since we spent time together. Aren’t you so happy to see Judah?”
Nora plastered a smile on her face. “I am so happy to see Judah.”
“And I am so happy to see you, Nora,” Judah responded woodenly. Nora guessed this was not the first setup his family had tried out on him.
Judah was single, though she’d heard he’d dated a couple of local girls. He shared the characteristic brown hair and brown eyes of many Ashkenizi Jews, same as Nora. Sadly, in addition to his slender features, which strongly resembled her own, he was also exactly two inches taller than she.
There wasn’t anything wrong with being short. Unless, of course, those stolen romance novels and too many Outlander episodes in the comfort of her own apartment had convinced Nora that she needed a man who could beat her at arm wrestling. Or possibly bench press her. Or break her in half.
So, someone who had a lot more testosterone than Judah Weiss did. And muscles.
While Ruth didn’t quite understand the standard Nora was using, Nora was fully aware it significantly shrunk her dating prospects. The Orthodox Jewish guys of Cleveland weren’t always short, but they did tend toward spindly. Turned out, cardiovascular fitness was not enhanced if a guy spent most his time studying religious texts.
Nora’s father, Chaim, shook hands with Judah and his father, Gershon. The women made no attempt to shake hands with the men. That simply wasn’t done. Once kids turned eleven, they stopped deliberately touching the opposite sex until marriage.
This, of course too, made sense because everyone got married by twenty. Even kissing was off-limits until the brink of engagement. Premarital sex was obviously out, so marriage was the only way ‘in.’ Equally unsurprisingly, the rate of unmarried teenage pregnancy among Orthodox Jews was incredibly low.
It also meant unmarried women had a very high desire to strangle their matchmaking mothers.
The conversation throughout the meal was pretty stilted, and talk between Nora and Judah was impossible for several reasons. First, they weren’t sitting near each other, and second, they didn’t have anything to say to each other since Judah had stopped actively practicing their religion in high school.
No matter, the parents soldiered on, ignoring the lack of participation of their errant children. Mostly they talked about who had married whom in the community. They weren’t supposed to gossip per se, according to the Torah, but it was always important to know who was the next eligible bachelor or fading bachelorette.
As the excruciating meal wound to a close, Nora gratefully stood up to start clearing away the dishes.
“Oh, that’s okay, dear,” Ruth said. “Why don’t you show Judah our new landscaping outside?”
“You want me to show him our yard?”
“What a fabulous idea!” his mother brightly agreed. “Judah’s very interested in bushes.”
The two medical students exchanged an incredulous glance. They assumed his mother was completely unaware of the sexual innuendo she had made. Still, it was quite clear though, their parents wanted this to happen, or else they would have never been allowed to be alone together.
“Yes, I love hedges,” Judah tried dutifully. Under the approving attention of their parents, they went outside into the warm September Ohio night.
After pretending to show off the shrubbery, Nora said, “How long do you think we have to stand out here?”
“I don’t know. Ten minutes? If it goes for longer than that, they’ll have us engaged.”
“No offense, Judah, but I really don’t want to be engaged to you. You’re not my type.”
“You’re not mine, either. Should we try anyway? Maybe I should kiss you?” He said it with the excitement one would imagine when lancing boil.
“Please, no.” Nora took a step away.
“Sorry. I won’t touch you.” He kicked a stone and addressed the nearest boxwood pine. “My mom isn’t going to stop until she thinks I’m in some type of relationship.”
“Mines not going to stop until I’m under the wedding canopy with the rabbi declaring me married.” Nora said bitterly. “And then she’ll harass me to make babies right away.”
“You don’t want to have babies right away?”
“I’m one month into my first year of med school. Why would I want to have babies right away?”
“Sorry, my mom’s been doing this for about three years to me, and every Jewish girl I talk to—they seem to want to kids right away. I stayed in Cleveland to save money for medical school. No one should have a baby with me when I live in the garage above my parents.”
“You could move out, and they would stop—” Nora amended, “—would be less. I don’t live here. I have my own apartment.”
“You believed moving out would be enough? You’re out here with me right now,” Judah rightfully pointed out.
“It probably won’t make a difference. I don’t want to have kids until I’m out of medical school.”
“That’s a first for me. You’re not like other girls,” he said.
“Other women,” she corrected him. “Sorry, that was harsh.”
“You’re right. Sorry. I would never call the women in my class ‘girls.’ One of them would probably stab me with a scalpel. There are some gunners out there.”
Gunner was a compliment and an insult among medical students. If used as a compliment, it meant a student was hard-working and very knowledgeable. The flip side was that also meant that the student was ruthless and would shove other medical students to the side (or assassinate them in other ways) to get better evaluations.
“What are you going into? Internal medicine?” she asked, rather than discuss their not remotely pending nuptials.
“I want to do surgery,” he said, showing confidence she hadn’t expected out of him.
“Surgery? You?” she asked. “Back in Hebrew school, you fainted at the sight of blood.”
“I was in fifth grade,” he protested.
“My turn to be sorry again,” Nora said. She had no reason to throw stones if she hadn’t been on a rotation yet.
“If we get married, this will be the most polite relationship. We’ll just spend the whole time telling each other we’re sorry. Do you have any idea what specialty you’re thinking about? Your class shouldn’t even be shadowing yet.”
She dropped her voice conspiratorially, “I’m thinking OB-GYN?”
“You want to do OB? Like OB—women with unplanned pregnancies, STDs, pelvic exams. Are you even supposed to know about that?” Orthodox Jewish girls were notoriously sheltered in their teenage years. Their knowledge of the birds and the bees before marriage depended on their leanings toward Modern Orthodoxy.
“Are you asking if I can say ‘sex’ with a straight face? I graduated University of Michigan Summa Cum Laude with a degree in biology and got into medical school.” Nora’s protest was undermined because she admittedly did get a little pink.
“I didn’t think you could.” He actually giggled.
If he had been one of her two brothers, she would have whacked him on the shoulder. Still, it got her thinking. “Why are you single? My mom is over the moon that you’re going to be a doctor and not have to struggle like the guys who study Torah to be poorly paid rabbis. I know you’ve dated.”
“None of them were for me. The same way that you are not for me.”
“Oh.” Now Nora was really wondering, as her next logical explanation explained why he’d pulled away from their community. No way forward except to jump in with both feet. “Are you trying to say that you’re never going to marry a woman?”
“And if I were, what would you say about that?” his tone was suspicious.
“I’d say I was sorry. Not because there’s anything wrong if you’re gay but because your mother is going to chase you to the ends of the earth.”
“She’ll love me anyway,” Judah stated. “Now you understand why I was willing to try to kiss you. Even pretend to date you.”
“I get it,” Nora acknowledged, “but I’m not going to do that for you. That’s the type of thing that happens on TV. If you broke off a fake engagement with me, people would say it was my fault. If you come out as gay, people will say that dating me was enough to turn you gay.”
“For a community that’s not supposed to talk about each other, it sure does talk about each other,” he started giggling again.
“I at least try,” she said. “I don’t want to know who got married, who ran off with who, and who got divorced. I want people to actually do what the Torah said.”
“Which is exactly why this wouldn’t work anyway. You can’t avoid knowing people’s lives in the hospital. Not that anyone does favors for me yet, but you help out one service, that other service pays you back later. Do you know that two of the ER attendings are married to each other and she’s the head of the ER, not him? But I also hear that . . .” He stopped when he realized he had proven her point.
“You’re right. We are not going to work.”
“Too true,” he agreed. “Let me tell you from experience, our parents are going to get worse from here.”
“I know.”
Learn more!
Good news: No more bad dates because he’s the ONE. Bad news: He’s either unemployed . . . or James Bond.
Third-year medical student Nora Bornstein is over her mom’s endless matchmaking attempts. No single Jewish boy of any age in the closest six metropolitan areas has convinced Nora to change her life’s ambition from ‘doctor’ to ‘wife.’
Enter Barack Perez who claims to be a good Jewish boy from New York. He says he’s an out-of-work cook, but he might be an international super spy for Mossad.
Nora’s not sure, but she’s finally met her match.
Warning: This romantic suspense is perfect for viewers who felt Fiddler on the Roof needed more unemployed assassins. Total avoid if you dislike Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Yentl, and an ending reveal to make you shriek..
If you’re a steamy medical romance fan, you have got to try the MetroGen books by Carina Alyce. Not only is she a real doctor, people have compared her books to Brittany Sahin, Nicole Snow, K.C. Crowne, Lucy Score, Kaye Kennedy, Janie Crouch, and J. Saman. Think Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Fire, and Outlander all written by a real doctor.
Her books regularly feature tropes of protector romance, romantic suspense, action adventure romance, BWWM, military romance, erotic romance, curvy girls, alpha male heroes, doctor romance, firefighter romance, police romance, and many many more.