“You tread lightly through life, but you leave deep footprints that are hard for other people to fill.”
One Day in December is a feel-good festive bestselling romance novel by Josie Silver. The story follows Laurie, a romance cynic who doesn’t believe love at first sight could ever exist. Then, one snowy December day, she spots a man who is instantly the one through her bus window. Certain that they are meant to be together, Laurie spends the following year scanning London for him. However, it is during a Christmas party, when Laurie’s best friend Sarah introduces him again, only as her boyfriend now. What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is a decade’s worth of connections, opportunities and roads reconsidered. If you’re on the hunt for more heartwarming stories about love, friendship and fate, join us at What We Reading for the best romance books like One Day in December!
In A Holidaze – Christina Lauren
Kicking off our list of the best books like One Day in December is another big-hearted festive romance read, Christina Lauren’s In a Holidaze. For Maelyn Jones, the most wonderful time of the year is anything but. Aside from her life going nowhere fast, this is set to be the last Christmas she will spend at the snowy Utah cabin where she, her family and two other families make merry every year. As she drives away from the cabin for the final time, she makes a simple plea to the universe to ‘show me what will make me happy’.
The next thing she knows, tyres screech and her vision goes black. When she wakes, she is on a plane heading to Utah, destined to begin the same holiday all over again. With one disaster after another sending her straight back to the plane, Mae is forced to work out how to break out of this bizarre time loop and finally bag her true love under the mistletoe.
Normal People – Sally Rooney
During their days at school, Marianne and Connell pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, whilst she is known for being intensely proud and reclusive. But, when Connell goes to pick up his mother from her cleaning job at Marianne’s house, a strange, but undeniable connection grows between the two teenagers. A year on, the pair are studying at Trinity College where Marianne has found herself in a new social circle, whilst Connell lingers on the sidelines.
As they grow up from their years in high school and then college, both Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people on occasion, but always finding themselves drawn back into each other’s orbit. Like Silver in One Day in December, Normal People is a story about the electricity of first love, the power of connection and the complex entanglements that can be friends and family.
Check Out The Best Books Like Normal People
My Oxford Year – Julia Whelan
American Ella Durran has had the same dream her whole life; to study at Oxford. At twenty-four, she has made it thanks on a Rhodes Scholarship where she surprisingly bags the position of a lifetime helping a rising political star’s latest campaign. However, as she sets out on her first day of a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a stranger who is too quick with his tongue and his car ruins everything.
When she discovers that the same man who ruined her day is her English literature lecturer, Jamie Davenport, it looks as though the universe is fully conspiring against her. But a late-night drink reveals a connection that neither of them expected. But, similar to One Day in December, a series of discoveries and impossible decisions lead to Ella having to decide whether the dreams she has always wanted as the same ones she’s yearning for now.
Dear Emmie Blue – Lia Louis
At sixteen years old, Emmie Blue stood in the fields of her school and set a red balloon loose. Attached was her name, her email address and a secret she desperately wanted to be rid of. Weeks later, on a French beach, Lucas Moreau discovered the balloon. Using the email address provided, the pair soon struck up a deep and meaningful friendship.
Fourteen years on, Emma is grappling with the reality that she is deeply, desperately in love with Lucas. So determined to wait for him to confess feeling the same, she has neglected much of her life around her. Nevertheless, when he tells her he has something big to ask her, she’s convinced this is the moment she has been waiting for. But, much like in One Day in December, Lia Louis reminds us readers that nothing in life ever quite goes to plan in her romance novel, Dear Emmie Blue.
Lovelight Farms (Lovelight #1) – B.K. Borison
Another one of the best festive romance stories like One Day in December, B.K. Borison whisks readers to Lovelight Farms and Stella Bloom in her 2021 bestselling novel, Lovelight Farms. In an attempt to save the Christmas tree farm she has loved since she was a kid, Stella enters a competition with the Insta-famous influence, Evelyn St. James. The only problem? To aid her chances of winning the $100,000 grand prize, she claimed to own Lovelight Farms along with her boyfriend. Only, there is no boyfriend.
Enter best friend Luke Peters. Having just stopped by for some hot cocoa, he suddenly finds himself walking out with a farm and a serious girlfriend. Little does he know that fake dating his best friend may just turn out to be the best Christmas present he has ever received.
Expiration Dates – Rebecca Serle
Daphne Bell believes that the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number attached to it – the exact amount of time they will spend together. Over the course of two decades, she has received a lot of different papers and numbers, and they are yet to be proven wrong. Finally, however, after a blind date at her favourite Los Angeles with Jake, Daphne finally receives a letter without a number on it.
But, as Daphne and Jake’s story unfolds, she soon finds herself questioning the paper’s prediction and grappling with what it means to be committed and truthful. Daphne knows things that Jake doesn’t; things that, if he found out, would break his heart. Much like One Day in December, Rebecca Serle’s Expiration Dates is a warm and touching look at what it means to be single, what it means to find love and ultimately how we define each of them for ourselves.
This Time Next Year – Sophie Cousens
Sophie Cousens’ This Time Next Year is another heartfelt book similar to One Day in December and follows the course of Quinn and Minnie. Born barely a minute apart in the same hospital on New Year’s Eve, the pair are introduced to the world under very different circumstances.
Quinn’s life has been nothing short of perfection, growing up to become an ambitious and successful businessperson, whilst Minnie’s neverending series of bad luck only seems to intensify with every passing birthday. However, when they unexpectedly encounter each other on their shared thirtieth birthday, they question why fate continually throws them together.
Seven Days Of Us – Francesca Hornak
It’s Christmas time and, for the first time in years, the entire Birch family will be under one roof. Even Emma and Andrew’s eldest daughter – usually off saving the world – will be present. But, Olivia, a doctor, is only making the trip to the family’s ageing estate at Weyfield Hall because she has to. Having recently returned from treating an epidemic abroad, both she and her family have to stay in quarantine.
For the next week, the Birches are locked down and cut off from the rest of the world. Younger daughter Phoebe is fixated on her wedding, Andrew locks himself in his study writing scathing restaurant reviews, whilst Emma struggles with both first-world culture shock and a hidden secret that could turn the whole family upside down. In such close and intimate proximity, not much can stay buried for long and, as hidden truths are discovered, nothing is more shocking than the unexpected guest about to arrive in Francesca Hornak’s Seven Days of Us.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
