Kissing her childhood friend on a family Christmas vacation is probably a bad idea…

The Jackson family is primed to explode over Christmas—with Stella’s parents hiding their divorce proceedings from the family during a two-week vacation to the cozy Christmas town of Bellsford, Stella and her sisters are under strict orders not to cause drama.

And falling for her childhood friend she hasn’t seen in years is probably drama.

After a whirlwind relationship during a semester abroad leaves Abigail shattered—and unable to talk about it without outing herself—a cozy Christmas vacation with the Jackson family isn’t ideal, but is better than spending it with her own family. But sharing a room with her childhood friend and hopeless crush, Stella, is the worst—or maybe the best—part.

It should be easy not to follow up an ill-advised whirlwind relationship with another. But Abigail can’t deny the sparks between her and Stella feel… different these days.

As they rekindle a friendship and then something more, can they balance the situation with the precarity of Stella’s family? Or is a Christmas miracle set to turn into Christmas heartbreak?

Where the Heart Is is a 70,000-word cozy Christmas vacation romance between two childhood friends reunited after going separate ways for college, loaded up with only-one-bed, childhood-crush pining, a secret relationship, a messy family, an adorable kid who causes problems for everyone but she doesn’t mean to, Abigail’s ADHD making her want to pass out when there’s too many people squeezed into a room with her, and an elf—er, innkeeper, who knows a little bit of everything about what’s going on. Content warnings for on-page sex scenes, divorce, parental estrangement, familial tension around coming out, and romantic car sex. Sorry, did I say content warning? That last one was more of a content promise.