18 Winter Romance Books to Swoon Over This Season

From the romance novelist queen herself, in the Tessa Bailey novella Same Time Next Year, a whirlwind wedding on New Year’s Eve leads two characters together in a surprise fake marriage that (gasp!) may just turn into something more. When hockey player Sumner Mayfield finds out his work visa is about to expire before making his big break into the NHL, Britta decides to marry him so he can get a green card. What happens next is just as you’d expect—a complicated relationship and unexpected feelings.

In a heart-wrenchingly beautiful tale about love and loss, Always, in December starts off with the heroine Josie, who, every year on Christmas night, leaves a letter to her parents (whom she lost nine years earlier) in the postbox of her childhood home. But this year during her drop-off, she collides with a handsome stranger. Josie feels hopeful about their connection after they spend the entire holiday together, but then Max completely disappears without saying a word. Max and Josie continue to run into each other during the year that follows, but can Josie hope that it’s still fate after what happened?

A trip to Dubai for Diwali sounds dreamy for teenage photographer Nikki, but the boy next door whom she particularly hates, Yash, will also be joining in for the adventure. With encouragement from Nikki’s matchmaking family, she spends her 12-hour flight with Yash getting to know him while they travel from one continent to another. It’s clear from the start that these two teens may be in for a lot more than a shared trip during the Festival of Lights.

How could any romance fan resist a holiday fake dating scenario? B.K. Borison’s Lovelight Farms presents the perfect holiday setting: a Christmas tree farm. Stella Bloom’s farm needs some serious financial rescuing, so she enters a social media contest for a $100,000 cash prize. The only problem? She said she runs it with her boyfriend…you know, the one that doesn’t exist. So when she asks her best friend Luka Peters to step in, the lines become blurred between what is fake and what is real.

If your idea of a holiday romance involves a little (or a lot) of spice, Wreck My Plans is about to be your favorite new Christmas treat. Meadows’ recent release follows the story of Lena, who is reunited with her brother’s best friend during her week home for the holidays. But even in their best effort to try and stay just friends this holiday season, Lena and Gavin can’t help but watch as their best-made plans seem to get, well, wrecked.

This adorable YA Hanukkah romance book follows two teens who are trying to save a Jewish deli in a small Texas town. The only problem? They couldn’t be more different. Hannah Levin is stuck in Rosenberg with her grandmother (and all the family drama that comes with it) after a freak snowstorm. When she meets Noah at the local Jewish deli—one of the only Jewish establishments in the entire town—the two pair up to try and save the deli from closing. Despite her best efforts to ignore it, the joy and magic of Hanukkah may be exactly what Hannah needs.

The northern lights are hovering in the skies, and mysteriously, the characters of Almost, Maine are all falling in and out of love. This winter romance follows the story of a town on the northern United States border where the winter nights are long and cold, but the stories are heartwarming and sweet. Converted from his successful play, Cariani’s young-adult romance follows the story of 10 couples and their out-of-body experiences underneath the northern lights.

Spending winter in New York is magical enough, but unearthing a secret family recipe and falling in love? Now that’s the kind of cozy winter romance I need. A Winter In New York follows the story of chef Iris, who moves to New York to start her new life and comes across a family-run gelateria that could be connected to her mother. Iris realizes that this gelateria’s famous gelato recipe is also her own, so she connects with the handsome Gio to unearth secrets from the past that they never expected.

Jenny Colgan is the queen of the cozy read. Her books are set in tiny bookshops, bakeries, and cafes, and they always have a charming romance to draw the reader in. The Christmas Bookshop is set in Edinburgh, where the female main character, Carmen, hopes to mend a fractured relationship with her sister Sofia by taking a job at a bookshop nearby. But will Carmen be able to keep things afloat at the shop, or will a sticky love triangle get in her way of mending her relationship with her sister?

The Christmas Swap has the makings for a classic holiday rom-com. Margot decides to pose as Ben’s girlfriend for the holidays while the two escape from London to a picture-perfect manor for two weeks. It seems like what all fake-dating rom-com dreams are made of until Margot falls in love with Ben’s sister, Ellie.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year… but not for Maelyn Jones. This is the last Christmas Mae will spend at the snowy Utah cabin where she and her family have spent every holiday since she was born. As she unwillingly leaves, a car crash changes everything. When Mae gasps awake, she’s on an airplane bound for Utah, where she begins the same holiday all over again. Mae must figure out how to break free of the strange time loop—and finally get her true love under the mistletoe.

Told in the intimate voices of complex, endearing characters, Five Tuesdays in Winter explores desire, loss, jolting violence, and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs. A reclusive bookseller begins to feel the discomfort of love again. Two college roommates have a devastating middle-aged reunion. A proud old man rages powerlessly in his granddaughter’s hospital room. Romantic, hopeful, brutally raw, and unsparingly honest, this wide-ranging collection is the perfect sad girl romance compilation.

When a late-season hurricane turns single dad Noah Yates’ town into a disaster, he’s left scrambling to pick up the pieces. At least, until home renovation expert and reality TV star Catalina King arrives with a camera crew and a budget big enough to put the town back together again. But Noah doesn’t want a celebrity diva capitalizing on their tragedy. Can these enemies work together to pull off a Christmas miracle?

Through a bus window one snowy December day, Laurie sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn’t find him until they “reunite” at a Christmas party, when her best friend, Sarah, giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. What follows is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered.

Feyre, Rhysand, and their friends are still busy rebuilding the Night Court and the vastly altered world beyond, recovering from the war that changed everything. But Winter Solstice is finally approaching, and with it, the joy of a hard-earned reprieve. Yet even the festive atmosphere can’t keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, her concern for those dearest to her deepens.

Bowen Penhallow has always been a loner, studying dark and ancient magic on a mountaintop. But when his friend asks him to attend a Yuletide wedding, Bowen reluctantly agrees. Tamsyn Bligh is not a witch, but she makes her living off of them as a procurer and seller of magical items. She’s finagled an invite to the Witchy Wedding of the Century, but Tamsyn isn’t the only one sneaking about in Tywyll House. A spell transports Bowen and Tamsyn into Tywyll House’s past, to the Yuletide Celebration of 1958. As they work together to get back to the present, they must face off with the origins of Tywyll House’s haunting, the suspicions of their fellow witches… oh, and the fact that they might be falling in love.

When Lexie learns of her father’s death, she doesn’t know how to feel; they’ve barely spoken in the last 10 years. And she’s even more confused when she discovers he’s left her half of his holiday travel company, a successful niche business specializing in trips that explore the holiday traditions of cultures all over the world. Meanwhile, the other half of the company has been left to her father’s bad-tempered young executive, Theo. The will stipulates that the two of them must find a way to run the company together for a year before they decide its fate. Lexie intends to leave once the year is over, but a work trip to Spain reveals a chemistry between Lexie and Theo that is impossible to deny.

Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. Her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby’s been charged with planning their Hanukkah festival. Desperate for support, Abby puts out a call for help and discovers her answer: Seth. If Abby can survive his irritatingly handsome smiles, he’ll introduce her to all the festival vendors she needs. But over latkes, doughnuts, and winter adventures in Manhattan, Abby begins to realize that her fake boyfriend and his family might just be igniting a flame in her own guarded heart.