Recently divorced Ivy Perkins has purchased an old farmhouse in a small town sight-unseen. When she arrives, she is met by her hunky realtor who hands her the keys. Ezra is too good to be true and begins to help Ivy in many ways as she realizes the house needs a lot more work than she had thought. So...we all see where that part of the story is going. But there's so much more.
Ivy finds a Santa suit among all the junk left in the house. Turns out the previous owner played Santa in the area for years. In the pocket, she finds a letter written by a little girl who asks for one thing for Christmas. She wants her dad to come home from Vietnam. Ivy decides to try to find this little girl and see what happened to her.
That leads her to an elderly gentleman who was the little girl's grandfather. Turns out her father was killed in the war, and her mother moved away and they have lost touch. He gives Ivy some locally made candy which leads her to begin a business relationship by developing a marketing campaign for the candy shop.
Ivy also makes a new friend, who also happens to be very handy and helpful. But, she's got her own secrets and issues. And Ivy gets involved.
So while the predicted romance develops, a lot of other things happen. Good thing, because the romance was my least favorite part. It didn't seem to develop very naturally. Ivy continually insists she isn't interested in a romance, but very quickly and without much soul searching falls into bed with him. It was a bit weird.
But I liked the rest of the story and was even surprised by the end. The book is very Christmasey because of the Santa Suit and the festivities. I feel like some "Christmas" books are more like "oh, by the way, it's Christmas. Look at the decorations." The Santa Suit was all about the magic of Christmas.
Yes, the plot was a bit simple, the characters a bit shallow, and the book is short. But I liked the story, and everyone lived happily ever after. Which is all that I expected.
Published by St. Martin's Press, September 28, 2021
Audiobook purchased from libro.fm
224 pages
Rating: 3.5/5
Happily ever after? Sign me up. I could do with a little holiday cheer reading. I think reading this review helped me pick my next book. :-)
ReplyDelete