Ask any romance reader what is wrong with Christmas romance books and you will hear the same complaint: lovely snow, no story. There is a whole Reddit thread asking for a Christmas romance “with PLOT,” and it has a point. Too many holiday romance books are a bakery, a tree farm and a misunderstanding that lasts eleven pages. The twelve books below were picked because something actually happens in them. Each one is tagged by the kind of December it delivers, cozy, snowed in, family chaos or heartbreak, so you can match the book to the weather in your head.
1. In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren
Maelyn Jones spends every Christmas at a cabin in the Utah mountains with her family and their oldest friends, and every year she quietly pines for Andrew, the family friend she has never told. This year ends badly: she kisses the wrong person, the holiday falls apart, and on the way to the airport she makes a wish. Then she wakes up on the plane at the start of the trip, with the whole week to live again. It is a Christmas time loop with a genuine engine under it, because every reset forces Mae to decide what she actually wants. It is funny, warm and a little steamy.
December: cozy. Read this if: you want the best Christmas romance books energy without a single Hallmark cliché.
2. The First Time I Met You by Emilly Carter
Elena Reyes is a college sophomore who has spent fourteen months looking fine after her mother’s death. Marcus Sullivan is the architecture student who has spent six weeks being patient with her. Then the first snow comes in early December, all at once the way it does in New England, and they sit on their bench by the lake while the water goes silver. She tells him everything. He listens without trying to fix it. A week before winter break, in his terrible car, with snow turning gold under a streetlight, the words she never planned to say arrive. It is one of the most tender Christmas season scenes Emilly Carter has written. It is also the prequel to The Love I Lost, so you know it ends apart. The roommate on the other side of the wall is why.
December: first snow. Read this if: you want winter romance books that remember how it felt to fall in love for the first time.
3. One Day in December by Josie Silver
From the top deck of a London bus one December, Laurie locks eyes with a stranger at a bus stop and spends the next year looking for him. Then her best friend Sarah introduces her new boyfriend, Jack, and it is him. The novel follows Laurie, Sarah and Jack across a decade, through other relationships, near misses and one very bad decision. It reads less like a Christmas book than a long love story that keeps circling back to December, which is exactly why it works. Every winter becomes a checkpoint for what has changed and what has not.
December: heartbreak. Read this if: you like your holiday romance books with a long fuse and a real cost.
4. Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Lily leaves a red notebook full of dares on a shelf at the Strand bookstore in New York. Dash, a cynic who hates Christmas, finds it, completes a dare and leaves one of his own. Through December they trade the notebook around Manhattan without meeting, writing things to each other they would never say out loud. It is a young adult novel and it became a Netflix series in 2020, but the premise is timeless: two people falling for each other through what they write. If letters and notes are your weakness, this is the Christmas romance you want.
December: city cozy. Read this if: you would rather fall for someone’s handwriting than their face.
5. The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
Tom Langdon is a burned-out journalist who gets himself banned from flying just before Christmas, so he boards a train from Washington to Los Angeles to reach his girlfriend in time. On board he finds a carriage full of eccentric passengers and Eleanor Carter, the woman he loved and lost years ago. The mountains and the snow have their own plans for the trip. It is a gentle book from a thriller writer, a second chance story on rails, and it was adapted for a Hallmark film in 2017. It is also completely clean.
December: second chance. Read this if: you want to see an old love from a new angle while the snow piles up outside the window.
6. The Love I Lost by Emilly Carter
A confession first: this one is not set at Christmas. It belongs on this list anyway. Elena Reyes takes a restoration job at the Harborview Inn on Pemaquid Point, Maine, and finds Marcus Sullivan hired as the architect, ten years after he seemed to walk away from her. Then a nor’easter traps them in the old Victorian for three days. The power goes out, Marcus reads by candlelight, and the innkeeper Dorothy, who once spent three days snowed in at a Vermont cabin with her husband, promises everyone they will be “cozy enough.” Hidden in the house are letters from 1915, including one from a young woman told she will be married off to the wrong man “before Christmas.” And before the book is over, Elena’s older sister lays down the law: family comes to Christmas. “That’s the rule.”
December: storm-bound. Read this if: you want the snowed in romance books feeling with a story that has been ten years in the making.
7. Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle
A blizzard hits the small town of Gracetown on Christmas Eve and strands a train full of passengers. Three linked stories by three authors follow the fallout: a girl who walks to a Waffle House full of cheerleaders, a group of friends trying to reach that Waffle House with a Twister board, and a girl trying to make amends for wrecking her own relationship. The characters cross from story to story, and the whole thing resolves on one snowy night. It is young adult and clean, and it was adapted into a Netflix film in 2019.
December: snowed in. Read this if: you want three small town Christmas romance books in one.
8. The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer
Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt is the daughter of a rabbi, and she has a secret: she is a bestselling author of Christmas romance novels. When her publisher demands a Hanukkah romance instead, she needs research, which means getting into the Matzah Ball, an exclusive Hanukkah event run by Jacob Greenberg, the summer camp nemesis she has never quite forgiven. Rachel also lives with chronic illness, and the book takes it seriously. It is warm, funny and a pointed answer to anyone who thinks the season has only one holiday.
December: a holiday that isn’t Christmas. Read this if: you want a holiday romance with a second chance at its heart.
9. The 10 Years We Were Apart by Emilly Carter
This is the winter after everything ended. Marcus Sullivan has a ring in a velvet box and nobody to give it to, so he hides it at the back of his sock drawer, behind the gray wool socks his mother sends every Christmas. Then winter comes to Portland, Maine. The harbor freezes at its edges, the snow falls and is plowed and falls again, and Marcus works through it restoring old buildings because work is the only thing that does not hurt. For seven years he drives to the Pemaquid Point lighthouse on the first Saturday of every month and tells no one. The book follows both of them through the decade apart, the people they almost loved and the lie that kept them there.
December: heartbreak. Read this if: you want a winter book that aches the way a long night does.
The complete Love I Lost trilogy — available now
10. Winter Street by Elin Hilderbrand
Kelley Quinn owns the Winter Street Inn on Nantucket, and his grown children are coming home for Christmas. Then he walks in on his wife, Mitzi, kissing George, the man who plays Santa at the inn’s annual party. Every child arrives with a crisis of their own, and the holiday becomes a full family reckoning, with romance woven through several generations at once. It is the first of four Winter Street books, and it is the best pick here for readers who like family drama with their snow.
December: family chaos. Read this if: your family Christmas has ever needed a referee.
11. The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox
Charlie Goodwin is a chef and judge on a television baking competition in Los Angeles. After an accident on set she loses her sense of taste, which is a problem for a professional taster. Her identical twin Cass runs the family bakery in their snowy hometown and is desperate for a break. So they swap lives for Christmas. Each sister ends up falling for someone in the other’s world. It is the most purely cozy Christmas romance on this list, but the sisters’ relationship gives it weight.
December: cozy. Read this if: you love a small town bakery and a good switcheroo.
12. The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan
Carmen loses her job when the department store she works at closes, and she ends up in Edinburgh, living with her very organized sister Sofia and working at a shabby bookshop that is weeks away from closing for good. Her job is to save it by Christmas. Colgan writes gentle, funny books about women rebuilding their lives, and this one is snowy, full of old stone streets and a little romance that sneaks up on you. It is the ideal book for the week between Christmas and New Year.
December: bookish cozy. Read this if: you want to read about a bookshop while sitting in a warm chair.
What Makes Christmas Romance So Addictive?
Summer romance is usually about escape. Winter romance is about shelter. When it is dark at four in the afternoon, a love story that promises warmth works on the body as much as the mind. That is why snowed in romance books are their own subgenre: a storm takes away every exit, and two people have to finally say what they have been avoiding. In The Love I Lost, Elena calls the storm “clarifying,” and Dorothy answers: “Storms usually are.”
Christmas also adds a clock. Everyone is going home, everyone is facing their family, and every year that passes gets measured against the last one. The best Christmas romance novels use that clock. One Day in December spends a decade on it. The 10 Years We Were Apart turns a gift of wool socks into a reminder of the life that did not happen.
And there is nostalgia. The holidays bring back whoever you were the last time you felt this way, which is why second chance stories and holiday romance books fit together so well. The best ones give you the cozy setting and a real emotional wound at the same time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best Christmas romance books?
For a modern classic, start with In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren or One Day in December by Josie Silver. For snowed in, Let It Snow. For family drama, Winter Street. For a first love you will feel in your chest, The First Time I Met You by Emilly Carter, whose December snow scene is the heart of the book.
Are there Christmas romance books with an actual plot?
Yes. One Day in December spans a decade, In a Holidaze has a time loop, and The Matzah Ball is built around a secret career. The Love I Lost trilogy spans ten years and two timelines, with letters from 1915 hidden in a Maine inn. Each of these Christmas romance books has stakes beyond getting the couple under the mistletoe.
What are good snowed in romance books?
Let It Snow is the purest snowed in story, a whole town stuck in one Christmas Eve blizzard. The Christmas Train strands its passengers in mountain snow. The Love I Lost traps two former lovers in a Maine inn during a three-day nor’easter with no power. All three use the storm to force the conversation nobody wanted to have.
Are there clean Christmas romance books without spice?
Yes. The Christmas Train, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, Let It Snow and The Christmas Bookshop are all clean or very mild. The Love I Lost trilogy by Emilly Carter is closed door across all three books. In a Holidaze and The Holiday Swap have more heat, so check before you gift them.
What is a good holiday romance that isn’t about Christmas?
The Matzah Ball is a Hanukkah romance and one of the best holiday romance books of recent years. For winter romance books that are not holiday-themed at all, The 10 Years We Were Apart follows a Maine winter of pining, and The Love I Lost is a spring storm story that reads like December.
You Might Also Love
- Fall Romance Books
- Small Town Romance Books
- Best Second Chance Romance Books
- Closed Door Romance Books
Where to Go From Here
If you want your winter reading to have a heartbeat, The Love I Lost trilogy gives you a first snow, a decade of cold, and a storm that brings two people back together. All three books are available at the Emilly Carter shop.
Emilly Carter is the author of The Love I Lost trilogy, available now.
