Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley. 

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. 
Natalie.

This book was provided as a digital ARC through NetGalley in return for a fair and honest review,

This book was a delight from beginning to end.  Aliza/Eliza has grown up in the world of Orthodox Jewish practices and is arranged to marry a man chosen and approved by her family.  It is, by all apparent means, a good match.  However, just as she is to marry this man, she meets someone.  Capital S Someone. Someone who shows her that life is not always carefully planned and executed.  She finds a new world waiting outside her faith and takes the leap, leaving her intended groom "at the altar".   

This book was so beautifully executed that the reader could feel for each character and root for each one by turns, all the while knowing that there is no one-hundred percent happy ending for all.  I loved this book and will certainly pick it up and read it again!

A beautifully written book a book about religion love family.A moving book about how love can change your life and how secrets can be exposed.Highly recommend.#netgalley#bookoutture

This was a great love story, along with a musing on friendship, family, religion and duty. At times I got a little annoyed with the main character, but I actually think that was because she was so well-written that she felt like a real person you could shake by the shoulders when she was being annoying! A great book, perfect for fans of character driven family drama.

This is a story of marriage that tries to straddle two faiths.  Eliza flees from an arranged marriage with Alex and has to accept the fact that he life with family is about over.  Her daughter is fascinated with the story of how her parents eloped and married until one evening she finds a shoe box in her mother's closet. Now she is mad and upset with Eliza like a normal 14 year old. This is a sweet story but I couldn't get really into the religious aspect.  Eliza seems to want whatever she couldn't have. I received a copy of his ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Echoing another reviewer when I say that I would NEVER have picked up this book if the cover had changed to its current one (guilty for judging a book by its cover). I wish I could say that I was pleasantly surprised, but I wasn't. 

While I can appreciate the introspection into Aliza/Eliza's falling out from her orthodox Jewish upbringing while experiencing the secular world for the first time, I just couldn't get into it. I really disliked Alex as well as he was overbearing and ignorant of his new wife's reluctance to try new things. I also vehemently disagree with this book being even close to Eleanor Oliphant or The Keeper of Lost Things - I'm not at all sure where the comparison to these books came from. I wish I could pull something good into this review but I felt overall that the story fell flat and I couldn't decide if it was a character study or just plain boring. 

Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley for this ARC in return for an honest review.

This was a really great read. It was heartfelt, sensitive and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.

I really enjoyed it. I quickly found myself lost in the world of Eliza and non-Jewish Alex and I wanted to keep learning about their lives. Eliza was the perfect main character - very likeable but so frustrating, in equal measures. She was extremely hard to understand some of the time, but it’s easy to make unwise choices when life is confusing and messy.

This book was so good that I will be adding Beth Miller to my list of newly discovered authors, for sure!

Told in a pleasant and conversational style, “The Two Hearts of Eliza Bloom” was such a worthwhile read and I highly recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley, Bookouture and the author, Beth Miller for my complimentary copy of The Two Hearts of Eliza Bloom. My honest review is entirely voluntary.

The Two Hearts of Eliza Bloom was ....interesting.  It kept my interest and I couldn't decide how I felt about it most of the way through!  Its an easy and quick read and will leave you wondering "hm?".

Thank you NetGalley and publishers for providing an electronic copy for review.  This novel centers on Eliza Bloom, who rejects her orthodox Jewish roots and family for love, but then finds herself torn between the excitement of her new life and the comfort of life she was familiar with.  Several twists and turns, narration goes from past to present, but ultimately it is a novel about friendship, family, and love.  I enjoyed this quick read.

I thought this story was a hot mess from start to finish. As a Jewish woman raised in an Orthodox home and community this book was offensive. Aliza’s upbringing does not reflect anything near to the way the majority of Orthodox families I know conduct themselves or live. I think this book represents  a false picture  for those who are not familiar with Judaism and the traditions and culture. I will not be posting any reviews.  

No stars!!!!!

Utterly gorgeous. I'm not going to tell you how many train stops I nearly missed because I was too busy reading to notice where I'd got to. Let's just say work was lucky to get me that week! Convincing, fascinating and an absolute delight.

While it felt like a long read, it is still a book I’d recommend so that younger people I teach can see a living religion in a contemporary and ethically rich environment.

Eliza Bloom grew up an an Orthodox Jew, which means eating only kosher foods, an arranged marriage before the age of 25, no touching of the opposite sex, and certainly no sneaking around with a boy ... especially one other than your fiancée.  But this is just the scandal Eliza finds herself entangled in within the pages of The Two Hearts of Eliza Bloom by Beth Miller. 

Admittedly, I am a reader who judges a book by its cover, and that’s why I picked up an ARC of The Two Hearts of Eliza Bloom.  The cover of the ARC was bold, cute, and quirky - so unlike the cover featuring the girl holding the umbrella, which is on Goodreads.  The ARC communicated that this book would be a fun contemporary romance, but the new cover probably proves to be more accurate.  I didn’t enjoy this book.  It was rather boring and dragged out a very simple plot over far too many pages.  I couldn’t wait for this novel to be over, and it just felt like it was never going to end.  

I didn’t realize this was a Jewish novel, or else I probably would not have picked it up.  There is much information on Orthodox Judaism covered in this novel, and while this may have been one of the more interesting aspects of the book, it was completely foreign and unrelatable if you are not Jewish.  

The characters were self-absorbed and unlikeable.  I didn’t care one iota for them or their story, and quite frankly, found the large cast of characters to be unremarkable, and therefore confusing to keep straight.  

So what kept me reading?  The summary promised a big reveal, a secret scandal, but this too was a letdown.  There’s nothing special about Eliza’s story or what she’s been through.  Even worse, she was a silly, frivolous character who I just never connected with.  

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

What an interesting,insightful.read. I knew little about the Orthodox Jewish lifestyle so I felt I learnt a lot.

I loved this book and warmed to the characters. 
The story was well written and kept my interest throughout the book. 
A great read

Having read a previous book by this author that I enjoyed very much, I was keen to read this her new one.

I felt a bit blind when I began to read it as the book blurb doesn't let on much as to what to expect from it.

I found it to be fairly enjoyable, was certainly interesting to learn about the Jewish culture, some of which certainly shocked me, not a culture I agree with at all, but each to their own. 

There was a fair few characters to get to know and interact with, and I did enjoy getting to know most of them. I had mixed feelings about Aliza/Eliza as I felt at times that she wanted to have her cake and eat it, so yo say. 

The story was very well written and kept me gripped/entertained throughout. My only cristism is that sometimes it wasn't straightaway clear if you were in the past or the present. There was no clear separation or heading to let you know. 

So overall a fairly enjoyable read which I'm glad I read as I felt that I've learnt a fair bit from this story.

Eliza has been brought up as an Orthodox Jew and her entire life is governed by 'rules'. She has consented to marry Nathan but not long before this event she meets Alex, an 'outsider' who lives in the 'Real World'. On the day of her wedding to Nathan, with all her family fussing around her, Alex waits outside her house and Eliza makes the momentous decision to run off with him instead of marrying Nathan. To Eliza's father she has brought shame on the family and she is 'dead' to him.

Alex introduces Eliza to the 'Real World' and together they embark on a 're-education' journey seeing films, going on roller coasters and generally experiencing all the things that make up a usual western culture. But Eliza misses her family. She embarks on a secret double life where she visits her family during the mornings and spends the rest of her time in the Real World.

An interesting read in terms of learning about an Orthodox Jewish culture but didn't resolve satisfactorily for my taste.

I have to be completely honest ... I'm really not sure about this one!! I don't think I've ever been so unsure about how I feel about a book. I didn't dislike it, but I didn't love it. I found parts of it to be rather distasteful and I know for sure that many people will find it extremely offensive - I'd recommend that those people steer clear of it completely.
I'm Jewish, classified as Orthodox - certainly nowhere near the 'Orthodox' that Aliza and her family are in this book. I'm probably more what's called 'Modern Orthodox'. But I'm very much aware of the type of people described here. Is this book far-fetched? Not as much as you'd think. Could something like this happen? Yes absolutely? Does this happen? Yes, absolutely! Is it spoken about openly? No, absolutely not!
Children brought up in such sheltered environments either love it (mostly they do - they don't know any other way) or they rebel (fewer than you'd think) - sometimes they return and sometimes (I'll admit, rarely) they might even be lucky enough to strike the type of balance that's described in this book.
Aliza, who becomes Eliza, because her husband Alex pronounces her name incorrectly when he first meets her, and she asks him to keep it that way, doesn't jump into her new life with completely reckless abandon (as some reviewers will have you believe). At first she tiptoes away slowly, quietly and rather shyly. Yes, eventually she does take a huge, giant leap, but initially her steps are rather restrained.
Even once she has left the fold, and there's no mistaking the fact that she has most definitely made the boldest of statements by publicly leaving her family and her faith (and her fiance!), she still attempts to straddle the two lives she finds herself living - when it comes to the way she dresses and eats and even in her sleeping arrangements with her new flatmate and soon-to-be husband! And she certainly didn't turn her back on everything she knew, never to return. She missed her family and her best friend desperately. Leaving one thing for another doesn't mean that you simply forget what you left, I strongly feel that just because you left by choice, you are still entitled to feel pain about your actions and about who and what you've left behind.
Alex is not a monster - he did not actively seek to lure Aliza away from all that she knew and was comfortable with. Yes, he wanted to show her that there is a whole new world out there that was in direct conflict to all that she'd been taught, but simply because he wanted to share the freedom that he has enjoyed for his entire life, with the person that he now loved! Was it right or wrong? To answer that is an entire debate on whether the premise of the whole book is right or wrong - it's a bit much to go into all of that in a book review!
Is this book a love story? I'd say it is, but more than it being about Aliza and who she chooses to marry, I'd say it's about Aliza and Eliza and how she discovers who she really is and how she learns to love who she becomes.

Bookouture book so just clearing this down as a review for my profile so my feedback looks better - Kim Nash

Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for a free eARC of The Two Hearts of Eliza Bloom!

Aliza finally decides to agree to marry the seventh man her orthodox family introduces to her and is engaged within weeks. All seems set for her future but then she meets Alex and falls head over heels for him, blows of her engagement thus cutting all her familial ties and hoping for true love. 

Eliza and Alex struggle to understand their teenage daughter who is suddenly interested in being a "real Jew". Over the years their relationship has overcome cultural differences, critical family members and quite a bit of omission of the truth. Now secrets that were buried in the past come to the surface and threaten the relationship they have had to fight for from the very beginning.

The Two Hearts of Eliza Bloom is told in two time lines and tries to tackle the challenges a couple with two very different upbringings, ideas of love and religion would have to face. At times Alex may seem controlling and Eliza dishonest but as I do not always have to agree with characters choices to find it interesting reading about them that did not bother me. Although the read was not quite what I had expected - I think you get more out of it, if you question your own reaction to Eliza and Alex's actions - I enjoyed the depiction of a Jewish heroine and the emancipation of various family members as the story progressed. At times I would have liked a slightly less predictable story line but Eliza and Alex love story is not a "perfect" one and more interesting for it!