The Mistletoe Promise is a romantic novel written by Richard Paul Evans. It tells the story of cynical, unlucky-in-love Elise Dutton and devastatingly handsome but emotionally unavailable Nicholas Derr, two lonely, successful people who draw up a contract that commits them to acting as the other's significant other over the holiday season, with no difficult, probing questions and no strings attached. The novel follows them as they fall in love; Nick, a high-flying attorney, acts in the Professor Higgins role to travel agent Elise's Eliza Doolittle. Although this is a sentimental and beautiful love story, the novel also deals with issues such as child abuse, domestic abuse and emotional violence, and the journey to both public forgiveness and forgiveness of oneself.
Like the more than twenty novels that preceded it, The Mistletoe Promise made the New York Times Bestseller List and is the first of three Christmas-themed novels by Evans. These works do not have common characters but share the themes of Christmas love, faith, and forgiveness. The second in the series is The Mistletoe Inn and the third is still awaiting publication.
