JENNY HOLIDAY is a USA Today bestselling and RITA Award–nominated author whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, the Washington Post, and BuzzFeed. A member of the House of Slytherin, Jenny lives in London, Ontario, Canada.

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Announcement

Keep reading for a sneak peek at Jenny Holiday’s next wonderfully romantic story of Christmas in Eldovia, where Mr. Benz finally meets his match.

Coming Fall 2022

Excerpt

As usual, the last thing that went in the suitcase was the Post-It.

Change, or die.

Cara plucked it off the mirror in her bedroom and set it on top of her final packing cube. She wasn’t sure why she always just laid it on top of everything when the rest of her stuff was so meticulously packed, clothing and shoes and notebooks nestled together as snugly as a game of Tetris. She supposed it was because she liked opening her suitcase at the other end of her trip, at a hotel room in Miami or Madrid or Milwaukee, and having it be the first thing she saw. But one of these days, an overly aggressive TSA agent was going to select her for a random screening and the Post-It would get lost in the shuffle.

Which would be fine. It was just a thing. A visual representation of a sentiment that existed independently of its depiction. She could write those words on a new Post-It any time. It wasn’t even sticky anymore—it had to be inserted into the mirror’s frame to stay up—and the ink was faded. She’d thought, over the years, about going over it with a Sharpie, but she kind of liked the way the emerald-green ink she’d used as an eighteen-year-old had faded to a dental-office mint. It reminded her how far she had come. How much she had changed, and therefore by definition that she was still here, not only not dead but thriving. Doing better every year than the last, getting closer and closer to her goals.

A glance at her phone informed her that her Uber was five minutes away. Time to get the big goodbye over with. She checked her last-minute essentials list against the contents of her shoulder bag: passport, phone, computer, chargers, briefing binder, sudoku book, Mr. Spock.

“You haven’t had to travel over Thanksgiving for years,” her mom said as Cara clattered down the rickety stairs from her attic bedroom to the kitchen. Cara had half hoped her parents would not be up. It was four in the morning.