A spark of attraction burns brighter each year between childhood friends in this sweeping Hanukkah romance by USA Today bestselling author Amanda Elliot.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Eight Ways to Say I Love You by Amanda Elliot, which releases on October 27th 2026.
This Hanukkah, Shira Levinson is returning home to New Jersey riding the high of achieving major milestones. Though she only just graduated from college, she’s got her dream job and a perfect Los Angeles apartment—an actual miracle in the city of dreams.
Life has not been quite as kind to Leo David. Not only did he fail out of college, he was forced to move in with his estranged dad, who he still hates for cheating on his mom years ago. The only silver lining? Getting to see Shira, his childhood friend (and crush, though he’ll never tell her that) while she’s home for her family’s holiday party.
But that’s just the beginning. Over the next eight years, Shira’s and Leo’s lives spin them in all sorts of directions as they grow and change, taking them places they never imagined going. Sometimes those paths take them farther away from each other, and other times closer together. If they can only time it right, they might uncover a love that burns forever.
EXCERPT
She hesitated, then took a deep breath before saying, “I was so sad when you left.”
He was quiet for a moment. She glanced over to find him frowning at the road. “Yeah,” he said, sliding into the right-turn lane without a signal. She’d almost forgotten that, too—how it was almost a point of pride here to make turns without signals. Stupid. “I was, too.”
Stupid. Of course he’d been sad. She might have lost her best friend, but he’d lost his home, his dad, his sense of security, and all his friends. Hopefully he didn’t feel her stupid comment like itchy wool on his neck. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“I hear that in addition to working at a famous gallery, you’re a famous artist now.” He made a sharp right into a parking space before another car could swoop in; the place was packed, which she probably should have expected, considering it was only a few days before the holidays. “Your paintings are going to be in the Met? Something like that. Your mom had a lot to say.”
Shira rolled her eyes as they got out of the car and slammed the doors behind them. “None of that is true,” she said dryly. They walked up the row of the parking lot toward the front of the store. “I don’t have a—”
Leo flung his arm out, catching her across the front; she stopped short against it. Her mouth opened in a silent O of surprise just as a car flew past, so close the wind blew her hair back. “Sorry,” he said, glancing over. “You okay?”
His arm was still there, holding her back from the lane. She blinked and was suddenly thirteen years old again, and he’d slung his arm around her shoulders as he always did, but the feeling of his skin warm on hers was now something new and strange, something that brought warmth flushing her belly from the inside out. “Yeah,” she said. “Totally fine.”
Inside, she quirked a smile to see the supermarket displays featuring giant hams and bags of cranberries instead of an assortment of organic juices and salad kits. Some things she didn’t love about LA, chief among them being the food culture. Some-times she just wanted a muffin that wasn’t gluten-free or sugar-free or full of black beans but in a way you couldn’t taste them (you absolutely could taste them). “Okay,” she said, clapping her hands together. If they stood here in the entrance much longer, they’d get mowed down by a shopping cart. “So, where to?”
“Potatoes,” Leo said. He squinted off to the side. “Over there.” They headed off in the direction of the potatoes, dodging careening shopping carts and people arguing passionately about the difference between white and yellow onions. “How many do you think we need?” Shira asked once the mounds of delicious brown orbs were in sight.
“I don’t know, how many latkes per person? Three? Five?” “Let’s say two, because making five hundred latkes sounds
like the punishment some obscure Greek god might give you for overconfidence,” Shira said. “So . . . let’s google . . .” Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Sixty to seventy pounds of potatoes?” She blinked hard, as if trying to force her eyeballs back in. “Okay, maybe we can’t make our own latkes. Can we even carry sixty to seventy pounds of potatoes? Can we fit that in your car?”
But Leo was already shoveling up potatoes into his arms and piling them into their cart. “Google says that one potato weighs about one pound,” he said. “So that’s only sixty to seventy potatoes. Not bad.”
“I hope nobody else needs potatoes for the holiday. We’re about to clear out this store,” Shira said. She felt sorry for a second, then not. This was an emergency. A potato emergency.
Excerpted from EIGHT WAYS TO SAY I LOVE YOU by Amanda Elliot, published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2026
