A humorous holiday mix-up that will make you smile and leave you knowing that anything is possible when it comes to love.

Harper is a no-nonsense divorce lawyer whose last-minute Christmas vacation to Blue Moon Bay is supposed to be about peace, quiet, and absolutely zero human contact after a brutal year of contentious cases and bitter custody battles. She’s earned this break. She’s booked her cabin weeks in advance. She’s got her wine, her books, and a plan to speak to exactly nobody for seven blissful days. 🎄

The cabin is accidentally double-booked with optimistic divorce lawyer Gabriel, who just sabotaged her biggest client’s case three weeks ago in the most spectacularly annoying way possible. Of all the cozy cabins in all the small towns, he had to walk into hers. And the rental company is closed for the holidays, so they’re stuck together whether they like it or not. Spoiler: they do not like it. 😤

Harper approaches divorce cases with ruthless efficiency—get the best deal for her client, get out, move on. Gabriel believes in mediation, compromise, and finding solutions that work for everyone involved, which Harper finds impossibly naive. Their professional philosophies couldn’t be more opposite, and being trapped in close quarters only amplifies every annoying thing about each other. He leaves dishes in the sink. She color-codes everything. He’s chipper in the mornings. She needs coffee before human interaction. It’s a disaster. ☕

But Blue Moon Bay has a way of working its magic on even the most stubborn hearts. Between the snow-covered pines, the local holiday festivities that are impossible to avoid in a town this small, and the forced proximity that makes ignoring each other logistically challenging, something shifts. Maybe Gabriel’s optimism isn’t naive—maybe it’s just hope wearing a different outfit. Maybe Harper’s toughness isn’t cold—maybe it’s just self-protection after seeing too many relationships fall apart. 🎅

As they’re pulled into the town’s Christmas traditions—the tree lighting ceremony they can’t escape, the holiday baking contest Gabriel enthusiastically enters them in without asking, the caroling that happens right outside their cabin—they start seeing past the professional personas to the people underneath. Turns out, they actually make a pretty good team when they’re not actively trying to win against each other. And the chemistry between them? That’s been there all along, just buried under layers of professional rivalry and stubborn pride. ❄️

What makes this delightful: Susan Hatler delivers a sweet enemies-to-lovers holiday romance proving that sometimes the person who drives you most crazy is exactly the person you need—perfect for readers who love forced proximity, professional rivals, and Christmas magic that melts even the coldest hearts.

Colton McCord was just a regular cowboy working his family’s Texas ranch before the world made him famous after several stints on reality TV—first as a contestant on a dating competition, then as the star of his own show where eligible women competed for his heart in increasingly ridiculous challenges. And even though he turned on his charm for prime time, playing the role of America’s favorite cowboy looking for love, his real heart belonged to the one he let go years ago because he loved her too much to hold her back from her dreams. 🤠

Bella Connor thought she’d never return to Wishing Well, the small Texas town that holds too many memories and not enough opportunities for someone with her ambitions. Although it was her home for eighteen years, she could never forget how Colton McCord broke her heart while at the same time changed her life forever in ways he doesn’t even know about. She built a successful career far away from Texas, far away from him, and that’s exactly where she planned to stay. 💔

The gorgeous blonde is back in town to settle her late grandfather’s affairs, planning to handle everything quickly and professionally and get back to her real life. The sexy all-American boy who broke her heart is ready to shoot his final reality dating show—the one where he’s supposed to choose his forever person on camera, in front of millions of viewers. Life kept them apart for years, careers and choices and pride building walls between them. And now fate is bringing them back together in the most complicated way possible, right when they’re both supposed to be moving forward with completely different futures. 📺

Will Colton finally be able to tell Bella the truth about why he let her go all those years ago—that he wasn’t pushing her away but setting her free to chase the dreams he knew she’d never pursue if she stayed for him? Will he be able to convince her that what they had was real, not just some small-town romance they were supposed to outgrow? And can he do all of this while cameras follow his every move, expecting him to fall for someone else entirely? 🎬

Will Bella be able to let go of the past and the pain that’s defined so many of her choices for a chance at the future they both deserve? Can she trust that this time he won’t let her go, that this time he’s ready to fight for what they should have had all along? Or will the reality show finale write an ending for them that neither of them wants? ⭐

Here’s what you’re getting: Melanie Shawn delivers a second-chance small-town romance with reality TV complications, a cowboy who never stopped loving his first love, and a woman learning that sometimes the life you’re supposed to have is the one you left behind.

What happened in the basement?

When Cassie Walsh returns to her small Minnesota hometown for her mother’s funeral, she intends to leave as quickly as humanly possible. The plan is simple: attend the service, settle the minimal estate, sell the house she grew up in, and get back to the life she’s built far away from this place and all its suffocating memories. She hasn’t been back in fifteen years for good reasons—reasons she’s spent a decade and a half trying to forget, trying to outrun, trying to bury as deep as that Minnesota winter frost. ❄️

But a shocking discovery in the basement freezer of her childhood home changes absolutely everything about what she thought she knew.

The discovery of a body in her mother’s chest freezer—the body of Derek Hansen, Cassie’s long-lost teenage crush who disappeared without a trace fifteen years ago—shatters her world like ice cracking under pressure and forces her to confront a buried secret from that terrible summer she’s never spoken about to anyone. Not the police who investigated Derek’s disappearance. Not her friends who moved on. Not even herself, really, in the quiet moments when the past tries to surface. 🧊

Haunted by a past she tried desperately to escape, Cassie is thrust into a harrowing quest for truth that unravels everything she thought she understood about her mother, her childhood, and that summer when Derek vanished. Her journey through old photo albums, dusty journals, and reluctant witness interviews uncovers sinister family secrets that were supposed to stay buried and a web of lies that threaten to destroy everything she thought she knew about the people she came from. Every answer leads to three more questions. Every revelation makes the picture darker, more twisted, more impossible to believe. 🔍

As Cassie delves deeper into the shadows of her past—interviewing Derek’s family who never got closure, confronting old friends who remember that summer very differently than she does, piecing together her mother’s final years—she faces chilling consequences and revelations that will leave readers on the edge of their seats. Because the question isn’t just what happened to Derek fifteen years ago. The question is: how much did Cassie know then, how much did she forget, and how much did she choose not to remember? 😱

Why this grips from page one: Alan Petersen delivers a twisted psychological thriller about buried secrets, unreliable memories, and the horrifying discovery that sometimes the people we think we know best are the ones hiding the darkest truths—perfect for fans of domestic suspense and small-town mysteries with genuinely shocking twists.

Sametra Andrews knows how to run into burning buildings without hesitation, but facing her own emotions has been a much harder fight. For seventeen years, the devoted single mother and fearless firefighter has kept life simple and manageable: protect her son Samaj at all costs, avoid heartbreak like it’s a five-alarm blaze, and never depend on a man to show up when it matters. She learned that lesson young and learned it hard, and she’s built an entire life around those rules. They’ve kept her safe. They’ve kept her focused. They’ve kept her son’s world stable. 🚒

But one rainy night shatters that carefully constructed plan into a million pieces. After a devastating car crash leaves her son Samaj hospitalized with injuries that require extensive physical therapy, Sametra meets Dr. Malik Holloway—a fine physical therapist with Alabama roots, healing hands that seem to work miracles, and an energy that disarms her defenses without even trying. He’s patient where she’s guarded. He’s steady where she’s skeptical. And he has this way of looking at her like she’s not just a firefighter or a mother, but a woman who deserves to be seen. 💕

She wasn’t looking for help from anyone, least of all a man. Definitely not looking to fall for someone, not now, not when her focus needs to be entirely on Samaj’s recovery. But Malik makes it too easy to do both—to accept support and to feel things she swore she wouldn’t feel again. He shows up for her son’s appointments early. He texts to check on them both. He brings food when he knows she’s too stressed to cook. He doesn’t just treat Samaj’s injuries; he treats them both with a kindness and consistency that Sametra’s rarely experienced. 🏥

As Sametra rebuilds her life piece by piece and wrestles with old wounds that run deeper than she wants to admit—abandonment issues from her own father, trust shattered by Samaj’s father who disappeared before the baby was even born—Malik becomes more than just support for her son’s recovery. He becomes the reason she starts believing that maybe, just maybe, not all men leave. Maybe some of them actually stay. Maybe some of them show up consistently, not just in the beginning when it’s easy, but when things get hard. 🌟

But opening her heart means risking everything she’s protected for seventeen years. Can Sametra learn that love can rise from the wreckage of her past? Can she trust Malik with not just her heart, but her son’s heart too? And will she finally understand that accepting help isn’t weakness—it’s the bravest thing she could do? 💪

What makes this special: C. Monet delivers a heartfelt medical romance about a single mother firefighter learning to trust again, a patient physical therapist who sees past her armor, and finding love in the most unexpected place—the hospital where healing means more than just physical recovery.

When the Earl of Upperton sells his daughter off as a bride for the disfigured Duke in exchange for clearing his massive gambling debts, Isabella has never been more terrified in her entire life. The transaction happens quickly, coldly, with no regard for her feelings or her future—just her father’s signature on papers that seal her fate. Due to marry a man she has never met and always believed to be a monster based on the whispered rumors that circulate through London ballrooms, she truly believes her life is over before it’s really begun. 💔

The stories about the Duke are legendary in the worst way: he’s a recluse who never appears in society, disfigured in some terrible accident that left him hideously scarred, bitter and cruel from years of isolation. Some say he murdered his first wife. Some say he keeps servants locked in the dungeons. Some say he’s more beast than man. Isabella has heard them all, and now she’s being sent to live with this monster in his remote estate, far from everyone she knows. 🏰

But is life with the Duke really something to be afraid of, or have years of gossip and prejudice created a monster where there’s actually just a wounded man? Will Isabella be able to get past her own prejudice—the fear and assumptions she arrived with—and see the man beneath the scars? Because when she finally meets him, he’s nothing like the villain she imagined. He’s gentle with the estate staff. He’s well-read and intelligent. He tends the gardens himself. And yes, he’s scarred, but the scars tell a story of survival, not monstrosity. 🌹

And will the Duke be able to let go of the pain and guilt that has swallowed him whole for almost two decades—the accident that changed his face and his life, the isolation he chose because he believed no one could love him, the walls he built so high that he forgot what it felt like to be seen as human—and find a new life with a new love? Can he trust that Isabella sees him, not just the scars? Can he believe that this arranged marriage forced on them both by her desperate father might become something real? 💕

As Isabella settles into her new life, she discovers the Duke’s estate is full of warmth despite his cold reputation. The servants adore him. The tenants respect him. He’s generous with the village, kind to animals, passionate about architecture and literature. Every day she learns something new that contradicts everything she was told to fear. And every day, the Duke begins to believe that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t have to live in shadows anymore. ✨

Why this touches the heart: Bridget Barton delivers a Beauty and the Beast-inspired Regency romance about looking past the surface, healing old wounds with new love, and discovering that sometimes the greatest transformations happen when two damaged people choose to see each other’s true worth.

1944, Germany. Louise struggles down from the cattle car, stumbling on the platform as guards shout harsh threats to keep moving. Blinking at the rows of terrified women around her, hope drains from her heart as her sister’s desperate warnings ring in her ears—warnings she refused to believe until this moment. 🚂

Passing through the foreboding camp gates topped with barbed wire, Louise is pointed one way with the other women branded as political prisoners, their arms already marked with identifying numbers. As she trips after them on legs weak from the journey, her possessions stripped away, all she can think about are the faces of the people she’s left behind—her sister Marie, who begged her not to take such risks, and William, the man she’s barely had a chance to love yet but who’s already claimed her entire heart. 💔

When she started working with the Parisian resistance to smuggle allied soldiers out of occupied France, she knew she was risking everything she held dear. She understood that if she was caught, she could be sent somewhere exactly like this—to a place where people disappear and hope dies. But she couldn’t have known her dangerous work would lead her to fall so completely in love with one of the men she was trying to save. Hiding American airman William in her basement for weeks, she’d gotten to know him in ways that felt both impossibly intimate and heartbreakingly rushed, sharing whispered stories over candlelight, fingers brushing accidentally-on-purpose, hearts opening despite the war raging outside. 🕯️

Now, trapped behind barbed wire in a place designed to break spirits and bodies alike, Louise must find the strength to survive not just for herself but for all the others counting on her—the resistance members still fighting in Paris, the Allied soldiers still needing safe passage, and most of all, for William, who doesn’t even know she’s been arrested. She made a promise to return to him, and Louise has never broken a promise in her life. Even here, in the darkest place imaginable, she’ll find ways to resist, to help her fellow prisoners, and to hold onto the hope that love will somehow bring her home. 🌟

Why this touches the heart: S.E. Rutledge delivers a powerful WWII story about a resistance fighter’s courage in the face of unimaginable horror, proving that even in humanity’s darkest moments, love and hope can survive.

After nearly a decade behind bars for crimes that defined his early twenties, Franklin “Kilo” DeLuca is finally free—but freedom comes with more weight than he expected, more complications than any man fresh out should have to navigate. Once a quiet storm with a dangerous edge who ran the streets with calculated precision, Kilo finds himself facing the past he thought he left locked behind those prison walls, along with a future that feels uncertain and fragile. The world moved on without him, and now he’s playing catch-up in a game where the rules have changed. 🔓

Jameala “Mel” Sanders knew him before the system got its claws in him, back when he was still Franklin, before he became Kilo, before the streets claimed him and the law caught up. She remembered the boy beneath the reputation, the one with potential buried under poor choices and circumstances. Fate brought them back together in the most unlikely way when her job as a correctional counselor placed her in the very prison he was locked in, forcing professional boundaries she struggled to maintain while seeing him transform from the angry young man she once knew into someone working genuinely hard to become better. 💕

What started behind bars—stolen glances during counseling sessions, carefully worded conversations that skirted professional lines, a connection both recognized but couldn’t fully acknowledge—now has room to breathe in the outside world. But as secrets from Kilo’s past surface like ghosts he can’t quite banish, and old wounds reopen with the people who feel he owes them loyalty or revenge, Kilo must fight for the future he’s building with Mel. He’s determined to prove to her, to himself, and to everyone who doubted him that he’s more than his worst mistakes. 🌟

The streets don’t forget, and neither do the people Kilo left behind when he went inside. Now, with Mel by his side—a woman who represents everything legitimate, everything he’s trying to become—he must navigate the dangerous space between his past life and his hoped-for future. And he’s going to make absolutely sure there’s never a question of his heart, never a doubt about where his loyalty lies, even if it means confronting demons he’s spent years trying to escape. ⚡

What makes this special: Tacarra launches the DeLuca Brothers Saga with raw urban fiction exploring redemption, second chances, and finding love with someone who saw you at your worst and still believes in your best.

Reasons why I should not be drawn to Troy Serrano.
Number one: He’s obnoxious.
Number two: He and I were enemies over a decade ago in high school.
Number three: He’s my friend’s ex-boyfriend.
I could go on and on, really.

When my boss gives me an unwanted assignment at the assisted living facility where I work and tells me it involves spending four hours weekly with the grandson of one of our residents—that grandson turns out to be Troy Serrano, the same infuriating guy who made my high school years miserable. He’s now as successful as he is undeniably handsome, all sharp suits and that same cocky grin that used to drive me crazy. Still does, just in different ways now. 😤

Lucky me. Four mandatory hours a week of having to deal with his insufferable personality, his unsolicited advice about everything from my career choices to my coffee order, and opinions I absolutely did not ask for. The only consolation for this torture is getting to stare at his annoyingly gorgeous face in between our many arguments, which are frequent, heated, and unfortunately kind of… fun? When did arguing with Troy become the highlight of my week? 💢

Eventually, though, something shifts between the verbal sparring and forced proximity. We slowly warm to each other during our outings with his grandmother, and I start seeing past the arrogant exterior to the man underneath—someone who visits his grandmother religiously, who’s building a business from nothing, who makes me laugh despite my best efforts to stay annoyed. Our weekly assignments become something I actually look forward to, a fact I’m definitely not admitting out loud. 💕

What’s happening to me? Apparently, I completely misunderstood the assignment, because it certainly didn’t include thinking about Troy when I close my eyes at night, imagining what it would be like with him—just once. All the while hating myself for fantasizing about a guy who’s all wrong for me on paper. A guy whose car I keyed back in the day because he absolutely deserved it. That’s all this is—a harmless fantasy that will stay exactly where it belongs: in my head. Right? 🔥

Here’s what you’re getting: Penelope Ward serves up a delicious enemies-to-lovers romance about two people who thought they hated each other discovering that sometimes the line between loathing and desire is thinner than you think.

Though they were often ridiculed, dismissed, or completely ignored by their contemporaries—critics called their work unfinished, amateurish, an insult to serious art—their paintings are now revered around the world and sell for staggering sums. Their dazzling works are familiar to even the most casual art lovers who recognize water lilies, ballet dancers, and sun-dappled gardens. But how well do we really know the Impressionists as actual people rather than just the names on museum plaques? 🎨

The first book to offer an intimate and genuinely lively biography of the world’s most popular group of artists, including Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Morisot, and Cassatt—this isn’t a dry academic tome but rather a vibrant portrait of brilliant, flawed, passionate humans creating art that would change everything. Sue Roe’s approach treats these artists not as untouchable geniuses but as struggling contemporaries navigating poverty, rejection, personal demons, and the chaos of nineteenth-century Paris. 🖼️

Sue Roe’s Private Lives of the Impressionists follows this extraordinary group of artists into their cramped Paris studios where rent was always overdue, down the rural lanes of Montmartre before it became fashionable, and into the rowdy riverside bars of a city undergoing monumental transformation. She reveals their complicated friendships, bitter rivalries, passionate love affairs, and the artistic disagreements that sometimes destroyed decades-long relationships. We see Monet struggling to feed his family while painting masterpieces, Degas’s complicated relationship with the ballet dancers he immortalized, and the challenges faced by Morisot and Cassatt as women fighting for recognition in a male-dominated art world. 🍷

Vivid and deeply researched using letters, diaries, and contemporary accounts, this book casts a brilliant light on an unparalleled society of genius colleagues who lived and worked together for twenty tumultuous years—supporting each other through poverty and rejection, arguing about technique and philosophy, and ultimately transforming the art world forever with their breathtaking depictions of ordinary life painted with revolutionary techniques. 🌟

Why I’m including this: Sue Roe delivers art history as compelling as fiction, revealing the Impressionists not as distant historical figures but as a tight-knit group of revolutionaries who changed how we see the world—essential for art lovers and history buffs alike.

Trapped in an arranged marriage in the untamed Wild West, Martha Rowland, a spirited young woman, sees little hope for love or happiness in her future. She’s resigned herself to a life of duty with a man she barely knows, chosen by families making practical arrangements rather than romantic ones. Fate has other plans though when her intended groom elopes with his childhood sweetheart the night before the wedding, leaving Martha humiliated and her family’s honor in tatters. To salvage her reputation and prevent a scandal that would ruin both families, his disapproving older brother agrees reluctantly to marry her instead, and a turbulent journey of unexpected affection begins. 💒

Can Martha break through the walls around his heart before it’s too late?

Spencer Mahoney, a rugged cowboy burdened by family expectations and haunted by past disappointments, reluctantly enters this marriage of convenience with Martha Rowland. He never wanted to be anyone’s consolation prize, never imagined himself married to a woman meant for his irresponsible younger brother. His mind walks a tightrope between conflict and appreciation, as his initial disapproval battles against a hidden yearning for redemption and the family he thought he’d never have. Martha isn’t what he expected—she’s stronger, funnier, more resilient than any woman he’s known. 🤠

Will Spencer transcend his reservations and find love amidst these improbable circumstances?

As Martha and Spencer clash and collide in their forced union—arguing about everything from ranch management to sleeping arrangements—a tender connection blooms amidst their conflicts and slowly shared dreams. She challenges his assumptions about women and marriage, while he shows her what it means to be truly seen and valued. However, a new challenge emerges when Spencer’s past returns with vengeance, threatening to unravel the fragile threads of their growing love. 🌾

In this tale of resilience, doubt, and frontier determination, will Martha and Spencer discover that true devotion can arise from the most unlikely beginnings? Can a marriage born from scandal and obligation transform into something real enough to weather whatever storms the unforgiving West throws at them? ⭐

What drew me in: Ellen Knightley delivers classic Western romance with unexpected depth, proving that the best love stories often begin with the wrong groom and the most reluctant of hearts.