The Wicked Holidays Books in Order

The Wicked Holidays is a much more adult corner of Zoraida Cordova's writing, and it wears that difference openly. The first book, The Heart of Winter, takes holiday legend and turns it into fantasy romance, political tension, and snowbound desire. If you come in expecting a light seasonal romp, the book will surprise you. It is more sensual, stranger, and more myth-heavy than that.

The story centers on Alexander, the third son of a winter king descended from Saint Nikolas. He is not the heir anyone expected to rule, and he has spent much of his life trying to outrun both duty and a darkness inside himself. When his eldest brother is killed, escape stops being simple. The role Alexander never wanted starts moving toward him, along with the burden that comes with it.

On the other side is Lia Espinoza, a mortal woman standing at her own personal crossroads. She heads for a winter retreat in the Black Forest carrying a big decision about the shape of her future. Instead, she gets lost in a snowstorm and is rescued by a figure who seems pulled straight out of storybook holiday lore, except far less wholesome and far more complicated.

Under the holiday trappings, this is really a story about choice.

A lot of the book's power comes from that forced closeness. Alexander and Lia are snowed in together in a secluded cabin, which gives the romance room to build while the larger fantasy stakes wait outside. The setup is intimate, but the world beyond the cabin matters too. There is a winter kingdom, inherited power, family expectation, and an ancient evil moving in the background. Alexander cannot stay hidden forever, which means the love story is always shadowed by the question of what happens when duty comes calling.

That mix makes the tone unusual in a good way. The book is not just holiday-themed wallpaper pasted onto a romance. The winter setting matters emotionally and physically. Cold, isolation, inheritance, and survival all shape the mood. Lia is not simply swept into a magical world. She has to decide what she wants from it, and whether desire is the same thing as safety.

So if you are browsing this series page, expect fantasy romance with sharper edges than a cozy holiday title might suggest. The Heart of Winter blends mythology, adult heat, and a looming larger conflict, and it reads like the opening to a seasonal fantasy world that wants to be both seductive and dangerous. It is a good fit if you like wintry atmosphere, magical royalty, and romance that has to fight its way through more than one kind of storm.