Secret Christmas Bookshop

When a beautifully wrapped edition of Jane Eyre arrives with a cryptic message and no sender, Sophie — always ready to move on rather than risk getting attached to anyone — volunteers to organize the local Christmas festival hoping to unmask whoever sent it. Her search leads her to Harry, a withdrawn newcomer holed up in his crumbling family manor, resented by the town for staying away too long while his father aged alone.

Cressida McLaughlin pairs two guarded people — one shaped by the foster system, one by small-town judgment — in a slow-thawing Christmas romance about learning to let people in.