27 Dresses meets The Intimacy Experiment in this sexy, emotional, opposites-attract rom-com set in New York City’s Modern Orthodox community.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Soon by You by Dahlia Adler, which releases on May 19th 2026.
Arielle Becker is one hora away from a meltdown. After one too many bridesmaid gigs—complete with Spanx, heels, and hideous dresses—she’s officially over love and its overpriced trappings. Especially when they keep coming with the same smug, judgmental wedding singer.
Judah Klein is New York’s go-to Modern Orthodox wedding singer and most eligible bachelor. Years of failed setups have left him jaded, until repeated clashes with a fiery bridesmaid wake him right up. But when snarks turn to sparks, and fights turn to feelings, things get complicated.
Arielle is not a girl who settles down. And Judah is not a guy who hooks up. So why does walking away feel impossible?
CHAPTER TWO
Judah took a quick swig of water as the band faded out between songs, letting his eyes wander over the crowd. He’d always liked observing the attendees, getting the vibe of the wedding and trying to get a sense of the energy in the room. But more and more lately, he’d been focusing specifically on couples: What made them click? (Or on his more cynical days, how long would they last?) What were people seeing in each other that made them think they were meant for the long haul? And sometimes, because he couldn’t help it, how did divorced parents handle coming back together for their children’s weddings? (He was always awed by the ones who walked the bride or groom down the aisle together. His parents could never.)
He’d gotten a good feeling from Bella and Zach, an easy warmth between them that came through the video chat he customarily did with each couple prior to the wedding. They were on the same page about what tunes they wanted, sat close enough together that they might’ve been sharing a single chair, and smiled throughout the entire call. They were the kind of couple Judah loved to sing for.
The band launched into “Siman Tov U’Mazel Tov,” and Judah watched the joyful shift as men and women ran for chairs for the bride and groom. Bella took a much-needed break to drop into her chair as one of the bridesmaids-the one who’d been standing next to Stompy McGlaremaid-rushed over with a glass of water. There was always one bridesmaid more conscientious than the rest, usually to the point of hovering like a mom dropping off her kid at preschool, and she was definitely it.
He wasn’t exactly surprised the award didn’t go to the woman who’d clawed his arm, stomped on his foot, and then lost her shoe to a flower girl.
The song rolled effortlessly off his tongue as the crowds shuffled in their overcrowded circles, with men on one side of the artful wall of fairy light-strung trees serving as a mechitza to divide the dance floor in half, and women on the other. A group of grooms-men coaxed Zach into a chair, lifting him high up into the air, to Bella’s delight. Then it was her turn, and her brothers rushed over to the women’s section to lift her to join him.
Judah kept singing as the Kellerman brothers raised their sis-ter’s chair, and she squealed as they hoisted her upward to “dance” with her groom. The air filled with applause and cheers as Bella and Zach each took an end of a cloth napkin, swinging their arms in the air.
Then one of the men holding Bella got the brilliant idea of swaying along with them.
“Aaah!” Bella’s little shriek made the swaying man laugh, and soon all her brothers were getting into it, taking turns pretending they were going to drop her on their way back to the women’s side, cracking up as she yelped in alarm while simultaneously gripping the skirt of her enormous dress to the chair cushion to ensure she wouldn’t flash the dancing guests.
Judah glanced over at Zach to see if he’d step in, but he’d already been swept off the chair and back into a round of men dancing hard enough to smash through the wooden dance floor, oblivious to his new wife’s misery on the other side of the mechitza. In fact, it was almost impossible from anyone else’s vantage point to see the terror in Bella’s eyes, given she was both high up and pasting on what he assumed was intended to be a placid bridal smile. But the guys were getting increasingly careless, and —
Judah dropped the mic—literally—and went sailing onto the floor, diving under Bella’s chair. Gasps erupted from the crowd as he caught the corner where the bride had been about to go sliding right onto the floor.
And then pain jolted through his skull, and he barely managed to lower Bella down before he himself collapsed.
“Ow,” he declared for the second time that night, at the same time a much more jarring and profane exclamation rent the air in a feminine voice. The band had already stopped playing, all ex-cept Benjy, the bass player, who was definitely high. Judah lifted a hand to his forehead to make sure he wasn’t bleeding and realized someone was directly in front of him, doing the exact same thing.
Apparently, Stompy McGlaremaid had also come to Bella’s rescue.
“What the fuck, wedding singer?” she snarled, pressing the heel of her hand to her hairline. “I had her!”
He wondered whether it was really possible that she didn’t know his name, or if she just didn’t care. In fairness, he didn’t know hers, didn’t know anything about her except that she seemed to exist solely to injure him at this wedding. “I obviously didn’t see you,” he said tightly, although he couldn’t imagine how he’d missed her; between her curtain of curls, pillowy lips, and curves that somehow made even a floor-length bridesmaid dress look borderline obscene, she seemed handcrafted by God to draw attention.
He hadn’t even known eyes the color of the ocean could spit fire, but there they went, defying nature.
Whatever Stompy was going to reply was cut off by a voice say-ing, “This was all I could get.” Judah looked up to see the Normal Human Bridesmaid, who was somehow friends with this wilde-beest, holding out a cloth napkin of ice.
“Thanks,” he muttered, reaching for it. Unfortunately, with no clarification as to which of them it was for, Stompy once again had the same idea, and their hands collided as they reached for the napkin.
Another jolt shot straight up Judah’s spine, different and decid-edly less painful than the last, and he quickly yanked his hand back. But even as Stompy glared at him and took the makeshift ice pack, the brush of her soft skin on his lingered in every cell, a tingle he could only assume meant nerve damage.
He didn’t even realize he was still sitting there, open-mouthed, until Stompy shot him another dirty look from beneath the make-shift compress. “Jesus. You know you can’t catch something from accidentally brushing hands with a girl, right?”
Her wild misread of the situation would’ve been almost hilari-ous if she weren’t eyeing him like a piece of bad sushi. “How about from being stomped on, headbutted, and brushing hands with a girl?” he snapped back.
“Perhaps you should consider being less in the way,” she said venomously, her free hand tugging at one of the many piercings lining her ears. “Shouldn’t you get back to the stage?”
Yes, yes, he should. It was tempting to keep fighting, but he was there to work, and the band had already picked back up with the next song. He pulled himself off the floor and returned to the stage, nodding at the other band members to assure them he was okay.
But as he rubbed his fingers together behind his back, willing the tingle in his skin to go away, he wasn’t entirely sure that he was.
