Holiday romances hit differently as audiobooks. There’s something about a narrator’s voice pulling you into a snowed-in airport or a sun-soaked Italian village that makes the fantasy feel genuinely immersive, the kind of listening you save for a long bath or a solo holiday drive. Wrapped up in festive settings and that familiar will-they-won’t-they tension, these stories are pure comfort listening, and the genre has quietly produced some genuinely sharp writing.

If you loved Jenny Han’s warmth in “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” this shelf is your next stop. Listeners who want low emotional stakes but high emotional payoff, basically someone who needs a book that ends well, will feel right at home here.