It’s been five years since Evelyn’s beloved husband passed, but the 55-year-old is stuck in the past. Evelyn’s sister has had enough, so she buys her a trip to their old summer getaway, Martha’s Vineyard, where Evelyn learns she’s not alone after meeting Wanda, a divorcee with a secret, and Bitty, a sassy widow. As the three women make fast friends, they help each other learn how to move forward and start living again. So when Evelyn sees that her longtime dream home is on the market, she doesn’t hesitate.

The Penryn family have always been eccentric—living in a dilapidated castle in the wilds of Cumbria with an orchid-mad father and a classicist mother who likes to re-enact Greek myths, who wouldn’t be? Well-heeled Londoner Althea Penryn doesn’t expect a divorce and job hunt over the Christmas holidays, but her husband claims he’s done and the prenup is solid. She packs up her reluctant teenage children and heads home to Casterglass Castle to confront the ghosts of her past—including the real one her mother claims lives in the old guard tower.

Libby Cooper hasn’t celebrated Christmas since the night her parents died in a terrible accident. She wants to forget that the season of goodwill even exists; but her grandmother has other ideas. It’s time for Libby to start living her life just as her parents would have wanted her to do. First stop New York! What better way to immerse herself in the celebrations, than working in her great aunt’s Christmas shop, just a few blocks from Central Park? Making new friends in the Big Apple is the easy bit, but leaving the past behind proves much harder than Libby imagined.

Now in his seventies, Robert Parkin is stunned to find himself the unlikely sex symbol of the village gardening club. Living in happy solitude with his cat Isaac Mewton in the Devon village of Millbrook, entertained by his mischievous chickens and goats, Robert has never figured out the rules of romance. But as the local ladies vie for his company, it soon becomes clear that Robert’s Victoria Sponge cake is the lure, and as his baking prowess grows, so does his confidence. Cheesecakes, meringues, puddings, Robert can do it all, but his real masterpieces are his scones.

He's a billionaire that's supposed to be dead. She's the woman who chose his best friend over him. They've forged a strong online friendship over two decades as she's raised her eight kids alone, and he kept the promise he made to her husband.