The Santa Suit is a Brief Visit with Christmas Magic
My first Hallmark movie reading experience went too much to plan
(Full disclosure: I received a free digital copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Specific book links in this article are Bookshop.org affiliate links.)
If you’re even slightly overlapping with the book community on Instagram, you’ve likely seen a ton of people picking up Mary Kay Andrews’ The Santa Suit.
The book is billed as a Hallmark Christmas movie readalike, with a recently divorced woman and her suspiciously well behaved dog moving into an old farmhouse, sight unseen. The previous owner left behind basically everything, including a beautifully decorated Santa suit. For some reason, Ivy feels drawn to seek out the young girl who wrote the letter she finds tucked in the suit’s pocket, which is one of the primary drivers of the plot.
As a fan of Hallmark movies around Christmas time, the comp definitely pulled me in. Except I think this one maybe fits the brief a bit too well.
Movies exist in a finite chunk of time by definition. Hallmark especially sticks to a pretty quick clip of around an hour and a half. That means things sometimes happen pretty quickly, and one suspends their disbelief because Christmas magic is…
