Jessica Louis is tired of spending the holidays alone. A last-minute escape to the charming Holly House Inn sounds like the perfect way to hide from her own heartbreak. But between a surprise blizzard, two curious little girls, and an innkeeper with more secrets than garland, her plans for a peaceful Christmas vanish faster than fresh snow on warm pavement.
Graham Harper has held the pieces of his family together since his wife’s passing—running the inn, raising his daughters, and keeping his heart carefully locked away. He’s got cocoa to stir, beds to turn down, and no room for unexpected guests with bright smiles and soft hearts.
But when the storm traps them inside the snowbound inn, Jessica’s warmth begins to thaw more than the ice on the windows. As laughter returns to the hallways and new traditions take root, she realizes that Holly House isn’t just a place to stay—it might be a place to belong.
Holly & Heartbeats is a cozy, heartfelt grumpy sunshine Christmas romance filled with found family, small-town charm, and slow-burn holiday magic—proof that sometimes, the best gifts aren’t found under the tree.
Jessica Louis is tired of spending the holidays alone. A last-minute escape to the charming Holly House Inn sounds like the perfect way to hide from her own heartbreak. But between a surprise blizzard, two curious little girls, and an innkeeper with more secrets than garland, her plans for a peaceful Christmas vanish faster than fresh snow on warm pavement.
Graham Harper has held the pieces of his family together since his wife’s passing—running the inn, raising his daughters, and keeping his heart carefully locked away. He’s got cocoa to stir, beds to turn down, and no room for unexpected guests with bright smiles and soft hearts.
But when the storm traps them inside the snowbound inn, Jessica’s warmth begins to thaw more than the ice on the windows. As laughter returns to the hallways and new traditions take root, she realizes that Holly House isn’t just a place to stay—it might be a place to belong.
Holly & Heartbeats is a cozy, heartfelt grumpy sunshine Christmas romance filled with found family, small-town charm, and slow-burn holiday magic—proof that sometimes, the best gifts aren’t found under the tree.
A tub of mint chip sat like a quiet accomplice on the counter, sweating under the kitchen lights. Jess knew—without pretense or illusion—that eating straight from the container in her softest pajamas didn’t count as celebrating. Especially not at Christmas time.
Her clinic was closed for the holidays. She had no idea what to do with herself, but she couldn’t ask her staff to keep working just because she didn’t know how to take a break. The spoon bumped against the carton as she scooped aimlessly; her laptop was nearby with half a dozen open tabs about charity gift drives, rerun holiday rom-coms, and a too-earnest article titled, Ten Ways to Love Being Alone Over the Holidays.
None of it appealed.
The living room was quiet; with only the soft glow of the twinkling lights she had set on a timer. She hadn’t bothered putting up a tree, just the lights and a cinnamon-scented candle burning out of habit. Her cozy bungalow in Serenity didn’t feel as warm when every room echoed more than usual, and she had nowhere else to go but to the next room.
Her phone buzzed once on the table.
She didn’t need to look. She already knew.
Jackson.
A text. Then a call.
Jess let it ring twice, then picked it up with practiced ease. “Hey.”
Still pretending that building your own gingerbread clinic out of graham crackers and 'Sarcasm counts as self-care?' Jackson’s warm, familiar voice came through with a lopsided grin. She didn’t need to see to hear.
Jess leaned back against the counter and let her eyes close for half a second. “If that were true, I’d be certified by the American Board of Baked Architecture by now. No gingerbread tonight, though. Just...freezer aisle therapy.”
There was a pause filled with background noise, Molly probably laughing softly in the distance.
Jess softened. “How’s she feeling? Still holding that baby hostage?”
“Yep," Jackson exhaled. "Due any day now. She’s trying to decide if the baby needs antlers on its hospital cap.”
Jess laughed, then bit down on it, warmth swelling and tugging something low in her chest. “Sounds like her.”
There was another thoughtful pause before Jackson added, "You sure you're okay spending the holiday alone?"
She could hear the frown in his voice. That old protectiveness she used to lean into without thinking. He knew the only family she had was a found one, and that, without her friends, she’d be alone.
"I’m good, Jackson. Seriously."
“I just…” he trailed off, then shifted. “You’ve been there for me every Christmas since—well, since a decade ago. I know we aren’t ‘us’ anymore, but we've kinda had a tradition.”
She glanced at the condensation pooling beneath her untouched ice cream.
A breath hitched in her chest—unbidden—and suddenly she was back in her old kitchen, three Christmases ago.
Jackson had burned the crescent rolls again. The timer was ignored as she danced around the tile, Bing Crosby crooning from his speaker. She’d been half-dressed for a shift at the clinic, laughing as he spun her under the garland strung above the cabinets. Her pager buzzed—two sharp jolts against her hip—and everything froze.
“Don’t,” he’d said, catching her hand before she could reach for it. “You promised. Just this morning.”
She hesitated—just a second. But her career always came first, didn’t it? Patients didn’t care that she’d stayed up until the wee hours hanging ornaments or that the stuffing was still cold in the middle. There was a flu outbreak. A pregnant teenager in her third trimester. No coverage.
Jess had kissed him on the cheek, grabbed her keys, and whispered, “I’ll only be gone an hour.”
He smiled, soft and tired. “You said that last time.”
She hadn’t made it back until well after dark.
The holiday rolls ended up in the trash, along with the tinsel he'd tried to hang on the mantle. That night, he curled up with the leftover ham she barely touched and watched Miracle on 34th Street alone before falling asleep on the couch.
She remembered standing in the hallway, coat still on, watching his shoulders from behind and thinking, this isn’t what either of us asked for.
And that was their problem. She hadn't offered him the same commitment Molly had...Jess hadn't given him a family.
Now, the candle on her counter flickered, and the cheap wick sputtered.
Jess pulled the ice cream closer and took a slow, steady bite, the mint sharp on her tongue. They no longer celebrate that version of Christmas.
Not anymore.
“We did.” Jess let the truth settle on her tongue, steady but kind. She'd grown and taken a few lessons from him, too. “But this year is different. You and Molly are starting something new.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t still—”
“It means I want you to have this fully,” she said gently. “The waiting. The chaos. The antler caps. All of it.”
Jackson went quiet. When he spoke again, it was softer. “And what are you going to do, Doc?”
There it was.
Jess swallowed the hollow ache forming behind her ribs. “A date with a blanket, a movie about improbable holiday miracles, and possibly the worst whipped topping known to mankind.” Her smile never quite reached her voice. “Don’t worry about me.”
We’ll do better next year. We’ll find other traditions...when things aren’t so new.' She could hear him sigh softly through his nose.
"We always do." Molly scooped out some softened ice cream from the carton. "I've got to get back to my creamed ice before it melts."
“Alright,” said Jackson, resigned.
“Tell Molly I said she’s got this.”
“She’s got this,” Jackson agreed. “And Jess, seriously. If you change your mind—”
“I won’t.”
He didn’t push further. That was the difference now—he knew when to let her go.
When the call ended, she set her phone down next to the carton and gazed at the laptop. The blinking cursor waited on the half-read article. She closed the tab without reading another word.
Carrying the carton and laptop, Jess moved into the living room and settled onto the couch, her legs curled underneath her. The remote was across the room, deliberately out of reach—a self-imposed test of willpower from earlier that now just felt more like an inconvenience.
No voices. No music. No clatter of baking. Even the candle’s flickering flame felt underwhelming.
The silence wasn’t solitude anymore.
It was hollowness. It was the absence of anything that mattered or brought a semblance of holiday cheer.
She’d done holidays alone before. Even last year, she'd shown up at Jackson and Molly’s with a ham and hung a few ornaments on their tree. But this? This year, they didn’t need her. Which was good. Progress. Everyone deserved that joy.
What she hadn’t realized—what now lived in her doubt—was how much of her holiday spirit had always been borrowed from others’ moments. She’d never actually created her own. She rubbed her wrist absently with her thumb—the calming trick she used between patient triage and 2 a.m. newborn check-ins.
Pulling the laptop to her knees, she clicked open a new tab without thinking and typed: Christmas retreats near me.
Enter.
A cascade of links loaded with spa weekends, yoga getaways, and silence lodges.
But just above the scrolling list was one small photo. A cedar-shingled house strung with white lights. A wreath on a fence. The Holly House Inn.
The site was simple. It featured a few photos of an old wooden porch and a fire-lit parlor, but no big-city branding. Just soft light, pine boughs, and a kitchen that looked like a dozen generations of grandmothers had baked holiday treats there.
The tagline made something soft unravel for her.
Wrapped in tradition, with the promise of home.
It was simple. Honest. Jess had built her life on reliability—on steady plans, clean breakrooms, and framing patient charts like puzzles she was trained to fix. She had spent years helping others while quietly setting aside her own wants.
Truth was, she didn’t know what her own traditions looked like.
The ones she’d grown up with had faded after college, and the ones with Jackson…those belonged to someone else now. Someone who wore fuzzy socks on Christmas morning and belly-laughed through burned biscuits in a home bursting with future.
This. The site promised something gently impossible for someone like her: a holiday without pretending. A space that was already warm. A quiet place to miss no one and nothing, because it wouldn’t expect her to carry the entire holiday season alone. She could enjoy the holiday without a plan preset by someone else.
It had been a long time since a holiday week had sounded like a gift instead of a task.
She re-read the tagline once more, slower this time.
Wrapped in tradition, with the warmth of home.
And for reasons she couldn’t name, her throat tightened.
Jess didn’t give herself time to hesitate.
Click. Reserve.
She barely acknowledged the confirmation before gently closing her laptop and gazing into the steady flicker of her candle.
She wasn’t running away from the solitude of her little home. Not exactly. She'd find new traditions at The Holly House Inn, and maybe, for a change, make a few of her own.
Set in the cozy, snow-filled area of Cedar Glen at the Holly House Inn holiday retreat, this story begins with Jess. She is steadfast and has always put her career first, but that’s come at the cost of companionship and starting a family. Graham is the single father of two eight-year-old twin girls, holding down the inn and keeping up with Christmas traditions on his own for years. The heart of the story lies in how Jess and Graham must decide to make space for something more in their lives—a matter of love, joy, and a potential future that doesn’t fit within the plans they’ve been clinging to for years.
Jess is steadfast, but she's starting to feel like she wants something more. She’s trying to outrun loneliness by exhausting herself at the clinic, leaving no room for anything else. She helps everyone but herself. She doesn’t know how to make space for others in her life without feeling she has to be who she is: driven, focused, and useful. She worries that she's built more for purpose than partnership. This book is more than a simple holiday romance; it dives headfirst into being single around the holidays, the loneliness of the season, and choosing career over family. It explores what a partnership truly is and how to make a relationship work between two people. Partnership should feel like purpose.
Told in dual POV, the book switches seamlessly between Jess and Graham at exactly the right moments.
Graham has no backup. No buffer. No plus one. Just himself, his two impressionable daughters who are determined to play hostess without adult supervision, an impending snowstorm, and six rooms at the holiday inn retreat full of guests expecting candy-cane cheer with an extra helping of holiday magic. Graham is the epitome of a stereotypical small-town romance single dad armed with all the duct tape and grit needed to make things work. His twin girls don’t just need a dad; they need more joy.
Jess inhabits Holly House Inn like she’d always belonged. She fills a room with movement. For the girls, she doesn’t try to distract them so she can do something else. It's nice to see a character who isn't afraid to jump right in with someone else's kids. The girls are uniquely different from each other, and the author gives them so much life and sparkle. Noelle is wild and unfiltered, while Clara is serious-eyed and cautious.
At times, it almost feels as though Jess is falling in love with the twins more than with Graham himself. The early spark between them is subtle, and Graham sometimes comes across as someone who fits the role the story needs rather than standing out on his own right away. I found myself hoping for a little more depth from his POV. Even so, the foundation of their relationship is sweet and very Hallmark-esque.
Grief does appear in the story, but doesn't weigh down the narrative. The author takes a light approach to grief, allowing it to weave into the backstory rather than cling to Graham or overshadow the warmth of the current action. The overall tone is full of joy and hope. As Jess says, “Grief makes you hold your breath too long. And then life sneaks in when you aren’t watching.”
This book is for romance readers who love holiday-themed, heartwarming, family-friendly, found-family, small-town, slow-burn, or single-father romances.