Love, legacy, and one last Nantucket Christmas …

When Clara returns home for the holidays, she expects a Christmas filled with family traditions and the comforting scent of her parents’ Nantucket bakery, The Flour Jar. Instead, she discovers their beloved shop – an island institution – is facing eviction, and the man behind it is James Carlisle, heir to a powerful Boston real estate family.

But when she goes to confront the landlord in his island rental home and is trapped there by a blizzard in the midst of his extended family’s arrival for the holidays, confusion abounds.

Clara doesn’t know that James is carrying a secret concern of his own and is desperate to make this Christmas special.
As snowbound misunderstandings give way to late-night confessions by the fire, cosy hot chocolate and stolen glances, she glimpses the man hidden behind the Nantucket Grinch façade — one burdened with responsibilities he can’t escape.

And when the storm clears, Clara must find a way to protect her family’s legacy, without risking her heart on someone who could take it all away.

Titles in the Nantucket series include:  Nantucket Summer ~ Nantucket Sunset ~ Nantucket Shores ~ Nantucket Christmas ~ Nantucket Wedding (February 2026) ~

This is a no-spice romance with either closed-door scenes or fade-to-black scenes. Tension and kisses might be involved 🙂

Title:  Nantucket Christmas
Series:  Nantucket #4
Author:  Melissa Hill
Published:  September 30, 2025
My Rating:  4.5 stars

Nantucket Christmas is the fourth title in the Nantucket series, and brings us both a heartwarming and a heartbreaking story of acceptance of who we really are, and the reality of bulldozing over history in the name of progress.  The wealthy elite summer families are trying, somewhat successfully, to change the tone, the history of this coastal, small town into a place “worthy” of their dollars by attempting to buy up property and “reclaim” it in their faceless, soul-stealing, sterile facades in the name of the almighty dollar… or lots and lots of dollars to fill their cofers.  Two people, from opposing groups, are about to get caught in the crossfire, and perhaps, see what truly has the most “value” in the long run. 

I enjoyed Nantucket Christmas on so many levels, with various reactions to the people involved, that it would be far too easy for me to tell you the story instead of allowing you the emotional satisfaction of discovering all of the nuances yourself… so, I’m going to give you my own emotional response, not the story.  I loved how lightheartedly Clara and Jamie first met.  That scene was funny, engaging, and set the hopeful tone for this couple, even if they did part at the end of it.  Clara has returned home after a few years absense to spend Christmas with her family at their family bakery, which is a character all in itself.  The devastating news she learned will set the tone for how she intends to deal with not only her parents’ situation, but also similar circumstances for several families and businesses within their tight-knit community.

Although I loved the unfolding of Clara and Jamie’s romance amidst all the tensions around them, it was actually Jamie’s mother, Evelyn, who was my absolute favorite character in this story.  Her words of wisdom to her struggling youngest son, the heartbreaking glimpses into her own life that she allows Jamie to finally see, and, hopefully, understand how he needs to change his own life, were so profoundly honest that it took my breath away.  Sometimes the secondary characters shine far brighter than the stars of the show… that was Evelyn for me.  And, a few, underestimated other secondary characters also got their chance to show their true colors as well.

This was my first experience with Melissa Hill’s work, and I will be returning to the beginning of this particular series to get caught up before I head into her impressive backlist.  One of the reasons that I love searching out new-to-me authors during the Christmas Romance season is for this exact reason, finding an author’s work that I want (even need) to discover more of… that is the gift I give myself.

I loved everything about Nantucket Christmas by Melissa Hill.  It’s well-written, giving us rich, engaging personalities to discover (good and bad), it’s easy to fall into these characters’ lives as they almost leap off the page in their need to be known, to be understood, and it’s realistic, believable, as I could easily set this story down in any neighborhood and feel at home.  If that’s the type of Christmas Romance that sets your senses tingling, then you’ll love this one.

I read this title through my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

This title is available at Amazon