Best Christmas Romance Books of 2025: New Holiday Love Stories

Book Summary

Avery and Reed have always had a close sibling bond, even if Avery does get annoyed by his constant matchmaking efforts. After the recent passing of the grandmother who raised them, the brother and sister have decided to honor her memory by spending Christmas together.

Reed is awaiting Avery’s arrival when a mechanical failure strands the ferry she’s on in the middle of the Puget Sound. It begins as a frustrating inconvenience, but then Avery meets a handsome sailor and witnesses a Christmas miracle, reigniting her belief in the holiday spirit. In the meantime, Reed discovers an unexpected connection when he bumps into a coworker also awaiting a family member stuck on the ferry.

Book Summary

Just days before Christmas and her honeymoon on a luxury train winding through Europe’s most beautiful Christmas markets, Aubrey’s fiancé leaves her at the altar. While she was supposed to be setting out for the most romantic trip of her life, now she’s heading out solo.

During the first day on the train, she doesn’t want anyone to see her as the jilted bride, so she might have accidentally implied that her new husband died. The singles on the train, including Aubrey, quickly bond and name themselves the “Unlucky in Love Travel Club”. But as the train gets closer to the final stop in Lapland, where they’ll stay in igloos under the Northern Lights, Aubrey’s feelings for Jasper, a journalist, are growing. Can they graduate from the Unlucky in Love Club together?

Book Summary

Single mom Holly has always loved the Christmas season. But this year she’s just not feeling it. There’s a big upcoming wedding in her ex’s family. While her daughter, Lydia, is thrilled to be a flower girl, Holly is dreading the whole thing. It doesn’t help that she lied to everyone about having a new boyfriend, and now they’re expecting him to be there as her plus-one.

Ryan thought he’d be spending Christmas on his own terms this year, but somehow he agreed to look after his niece while her mom is away. Now he’s back in Shelter Springs, with his estranged father, just down the road.

Just when he thinks there’s no place he’d rather be, he meets Holly. They make a deal. He’ll be her fake date for the wedding if she helps him give Audrey a Christmas filled with all the traditions.

Book Summary

Nolan Callahan is the Ghost of Christmas Past. He assumes this holiday haunting season will be just like every other. But then he’s faced with Harriet York, and he suddenly finds himself wishing for a future.

Harriet has always tried to be a good person, so she has no idea why she’s being haunted. She’s a people pleaser who has always done what’s expected of her.

As Nolan guides her to examine her past, they discover threads binding them together. With a Christmas Eve deadline fast approaching, will they find the key to their futures in each other’s pasts?

Book Summary

After finding a priceless antique book in her great aunt’s attic, Mirren Sutherland stumbled into an unexpected career as an antiquarian book hunter. This Christmas season, she’s been hired by the young laird of a Highland clan to search for a book that may or may not exist. Desperate to save his family’s estate, which includes a vast, crumbling castle, Jamie McPherson is hoping that the family lore proves true and that somewhere in the castle’s collection is a rare book so valuable it could solve all his problems.

On her train journey to the Highlands, Mirren knows it’s no coincidence when she bumps into a rival book hunter named Theo. He always seems to turn up whenever a treasure needs to be located.

Shortly after Mirren and Theo arrive at the castle, they are snowed in by a blizzard. Together with Jamie, they begin trying to piece together the clues left by Jamie’s grandfather, the former laird of the castle.

Book Summary

The Balfour family is getting together for the holidays, but this year they have more secrets to unwrap than presents under the tree.

Becky is stranded at the airport when she bumps into her brother’s best friend, Will. He suggests they drive home together, and she reluctantly agrees. Can she trust him to keep her secret about why she’s dreading Christmas this year?

Becky’s twin, Rosie, is struggling in her marriage. She and Declan married after a whirlwind romance, but now cracks are appearing in their relationship. They’re determined to hide their problems from her family. Will the holiday bring them closer together or drive them apart?

This will be Hayley’s first holiday spent with Jamie’s family. She’s heard so much about the Balfour family’s Christmas traditions, and they all sound wonderful, but will she fit in? And how will the family react to the secret she and Jamie have been keeping?

Book Summary

Fred loves her mum and her eccentric aunts, but she’s always felt out of place in her small hometown. That’s why she’s not looking forward to going back to Pine Bluff this holiday season. But a bad breakup and an eviction have left her no other choice.

As soon as she’s home, her mother ropes her into helping with the family Christmas Cracker business. She decides that burying herself in work and staying distracted might be just what she needs. But things get complicated quickly when she reconnects with her old best friend, Ryan, who she now realizes makes her heart flutter, and then she finds an unexpected spark with a charming journalist named Warren.

These connections help Fred open her heart to the idea of love, but she’s also forced to confront some hard truths. Can she make herself happy without ruining the holiday for those she cares deeply about?

Book Summary

Libby left her cozy, holiday-obsessed hometown for her career as an ER doctor in Toronto. But after a painful break-up, she decides that the festivities of Harmony Hills might be just what she needs this year in order to regain some holiday spirit.

Upon her arrival back in her hometown, she bumps into Liam, the dreamy green-eyed owner of the local bakery. But when a run-in with him and his excitable pet potbellied pig knocks her unconscious at the town’s rumored-to-be-magical tree-lighting ceremony, she wakes up to find herself exactly one year in the past.

As she relives last Christmas, Libby begins to wonder if this is just the second chance she needs to set her life on a better track. But if she wants to rewrite her future, she has to figure out what changes to make.

Book Summary

Despite being named Holly and born on Christmas, she hates the holiday because she was relentlessly teased about it as a child, and her birthday was always overlooked. This year is especially bad because she was also just fired instead of getting the promotion she was expecting, and is single as she approaches her 30th birthday.

Her older brother has brought a friend, Nick, home for the holidays. He’s also a Christmas hater, so when Holly finds out that Nick is supposed to be her pity date, she decides to go all in on Christmas to prove a point.

In between trying to prove a point, Holly and her siblings try to figure out why their parents insisted that all the siblings be home for the holidays this year.

Book Summary

Sameera is an ambitious but overworked attorney, healing from heartbreak and family estrangement. Tom is a chef who has achieved social media stardom but is still hustling to turn it into a real career, despite his family’s urging him to give up his dreams and return home.

The two meet and share a few laughs at a samosa-making lesson, but neither is looking for romance, so they go their separate ways. But when a viral social post starts a rumor that they are dating, Tom suggests to Sameera that maybe they should run with it. The fake romance could benefit them both, increasing Tom’s popularity and helping Sameera land a wealthy client.

But there’s still one problem – their parents. When Sameera’s very Muslim parents insist on meeting Tom’s very not Muslim family over Christmas in rural Alaska, the stage is set for an epic clash of cultures. As the two families exchange holiday traditions and opinions on their children’s lives, Sameera and Tom begin to realize that their fake attraction is becoming very real.

Book Summary

Melanie has had a terrible year at work and in life, culminating in her boyfriend, Finn, dumping her at her own sister’s engagement party. When he arrives at her doorstep two weeks before Christmas, asking for a favor, she wants to punch him, but his proposal is intriguing.

His mother, whom Melanie loves, is obsessed with hosting the perfect Christmas in Scotland. But that involves Finn and Melanie being together again. Since her own parents will be out of town during the holidays, Melanie agrees to fake-date her ex in front of his parents under one condition. She gets to dump him in front of his parents at the end of the trip so he can experience the same humiliation she did.

Book Summary

Clara Davenport’s family runs a toy business, and she’s been slowly climbing the ladder. Everything was going according to plan until the company was accused of stealing a doll design from an independent toy maker, resulting in lots of bad press. Clara is promised the promotion she’s been working for if she can visit the town where the smaller company is located and smooth over the PR nightmare.

Jack would be happy to never hear the Davenport name again. A year ago, someone from the company made him many big promises about signing him up for their small business program. Instead, they just copied his designs. So when Clara shows up in Fraser Falls to convince everyone that Davenport Innovation Creative is not the enemy, he won’t be fooled twice.

Book Summary

Some people are Christmas people. Jill is not! She had her heart broken on Christmas three years ago, then she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her screenwriting dreams and didn’t look back. She hasn’t been back to her suburban Illinois hometown since then. Until now…

After a very hazy night back home, Jill wakes up to a picture-perfect movie version of her town. She eventually realizes that she’s stuck in a “Heartfelt” Christmas movie, starring real people from her life, including her family, her high school crush, and her ex.

The only way Jill will be able to escape this movie reality is to complete the plot. But everyone knows that Christmas movies always include a holiday romance. So, Jill will have to act it out while her ex watches.