We've Got a New Year's Bonus

Well team, we made it. 2025 is ending and in its place is all the shiny potential of a new year.

My little gift to all of you is a bonus epilogue to my recent holiday novella, Merry & Bright. It takes place today, on New Year’s Eve, and you can find it right here! I’ve been so blown away by your love for this little story (and all the DM’s asking for more hahaha) so this is hopefully a nice momentary escape for everyone.

As 2025 ends, mostly I just want to say a huge thank you. This has been a big year for me, with my third novel and the seventeenth (!) season of my show. I’ve never been so grateful to get to tell stories for a living, both in romance and in food.

And there’s a lot of fun planned for 2026! My next novel, The Slow Burn comes out in less than a month (can’t believe I just typed that). First week sales are everything to authors, so this is my humble plea to consider pre-ordering—either in person from one of the local indies we’re partnering with, or joined our virtual romance pajama party or by coming to one of my events in NYC, LA, Baltimore, Charlotte or Charleston. I can’t wait to be in community together very soon.

I love the weird week between Christmas and New Year’s where time warps and we no longer know what day it is. But tomorrow, I’ll for sure be making the southern classic Hoppin’ John, which is meant to bring good luck for the year. You can see my recipe here.

As to food resolutions, I don’t believe in a world where cooking is meant to be divided into healthy and unhealthy, but I do think it’s nice to have goals to cook more. I’m biased that my book, 15 Minute Meals, makes that easier. But two others that I particularly love is Jenna Helwig’s Bare Minimum Dinners and Caroline Chambers’ What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking. Both of those books’ brilliance is in their titles, and all the recipes are on constant rotation in my house.

This would also normally be the newsletter where I put my favorite books of the year. But I’m going to admit something a little vulnerable: other people’s end of year ‘best of’ lists often hurt my feelings. I know it’s dumb! And I know my book is just one book! But in an industry as out-of-our-hands as publishing is, any list you’re not on (no matter how unrealistic) feels like an extra little paper cut. Why are we like this!? I’d guess it’s because anyone creative puts their heart and soul into their work, and no matter what success we have, we always want to push to do better. So because I have too many friends and people I admire whose books I loved and I don’t want my stupid little ‘happy’ newsletter to do that to anyone, I hope you’ll forgive me that this is just a regular list of books this week.

Three authors I adore all told me one of their favorite books of the year was The Everlasting— a tale of a lady knight, time travel, love and living for ourselves. That’s what I read this past week and it was truly as incredible as advertised. And since these authors have such excellent taste, I’m going to shout out their books too (they would all be on a list of favorites this year anyway): A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke (Paris in 1889, a woman doctor, reproductive rights and lots of sexiness!); Left of Forever (this story of a road trip to rekindle a lost marriage will make you sob and feel whole); and Along Came Amor (for all the type A gals, the third in one of my favorite series!).

I’m not big on resolutions—I don’t want to be forced improving—but I did do something this year that I hope might inspire some others. I turned 40 and I decided to make this my year of 40 new things. They ranged from climbing to the top of the statue of liberty to joining a bone marrow registry to throwing a daytime dance party. As the year ends, I have to say it was a huge highlight to do some things out of my routine.

So if you want inspiration, here’s the original list! I’m going to do a big wrap-up on instagram on New Year’s Day, so join me there too.

Hope you all have a wonderful last day of 2025. I’m so grateful to all of you for joining me on this journey of sharing happiness and I can’t wait to do more with you in 2026.

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