Booked for Christmas by Melissa F. Miller

Excuse Holly Jolly, Esquire, for not feeling very, well, jolly. She’s been down on Christmas for months—ever since she found her fiancé (make that ex-fiancé) making out with his boss in the closet at the District Attorney’s Office Christmas in July party.

While she’s not interested in love or Christmas magic, it’s hard to avoid the season when you live in Mistletoe Mountain. She plans to spend the holidays with her TBR pile, despite what her best friend and her family have to say about it.
Her plans derail like a Christmas train careering off the track when she’s appointed to defend a bearded blue-eyed stranger whose dangerous crime is … placing banned books in little free libraries? The case should be dismissed outright. But of course her politically ambitious ex is the prosecutor, and he digs in his heels.
The judge gives Holly a choice: take responsibility for the defendant or let him spend the holidays in the county lockup. Now, she’s stuck in the one-bedroom guest house at her family’s inn with a kind-hearted criminal who loves Christmas. And books. And who brings her hot chocolate in bed and rubs her tired feet with peppermint oil. Bah, humbug.
Jack Bell embraces everything life throws at him. But he’s not sure what to make of Mistletoe Mountain—or the cranky but adorable spitfire appointed to represent him in a criminal case that has to be a joke. His motto is roll with it. So he’s determined to make the best of his guest house arrest.
When the case goes viral, the prosecutor doubles down on getting a conviction, and Jack worries his secrets will be exposed. Holly works feverishly to defend him in the middle of a media storm, and he sets out to remind her of the true meaning of Christmas by dragging her to the town tree lighting, the gingerbread house-building contest, and every festive event in between. It’ll take a Christmas miracle to win Jack’s case and melt Holly’s icy heart.

This heartwarming holiday rom-com mystery features a closed-door, sunshine-grump romance where he falls first and is loaded with crackling chemistry, gripping suspense, and small-town shenanigans. The second book in the Mistletoe Mountain series, Booked for Christmas can be read as a standalone.