I really liked this one; there's a sense I had that this book was not entirely written for me (which is what happens when you read a story by someone who is no longer of the community you are still a part of), but also that it captured a lot of what I love about Judaism and folklore.
It's also, itself, a kind of laugh/scream of the women who did not fit into the mold that traditional judaism imagined; both trying to give them a voice AND reflecting on all the ways that their reality was always far larger than the stories told. It's queerness as a story resonates along their axes and it seems obvious, then, that a main character named Shiva as a vehicle for mourning all those possibilities that were impossible makes perfect sense.
It's partially an evocation of reality and partially a departure from it.
Also, like so many novels of academia, it loves the ivory tower and is a little more generous to it than it deserves. 
(This book is, of course, the product of research, but whether it is itself research into the very kind of story its writing about feels like an open question. Yes but also only insofar as it creates more of the stories that it studies.)
And for another point in its favor: no golem.