REVIEW:

If you’ve been bingeing Hallmark Christmas movies since the day after Halloween, it’s time for a break. Go out and take a walk. Call a friend. Read a book!

I’ll make that last directive easy for you and suggest you pick up Mary Kay Andrews’s brand new holiday novella, The Santa Suit. At a mere 224 pages, you can breeze through it in a night and then get back to your regularly-scheduled programming tomorrow.

There’s nothing new here, story-wise. In a tale as old as time, a newly-divorced young woman buys an old small town farmhouse site-unseen, and when she arrives to take possession she finds there’s a lot to do… including the hot real estate agent (if you know what I’m sayin’ wink wink).

She also finds a Santa suit in a closet, which has a little girl’s letter from the 1970’s in the pocket. Naturally she becomes obsessed with finding the now-grown woman who wrote the letter, and her googling and snooping around introduce her various members of her new community. Sweet old man? Check. Owner of a struggling candy shop? Check check. Cute and quirky sidekick female friend? Check check check.

The Santa Suit delivers zero surprises, but that’s more than okay here. If you bite into a piece of Christmas fudge you want it to taste like fudge, right? Fudge yes you do!

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

From Mary Kay Andrews, the New York Times bestselling author of Hello, Summer, comes a novella celebrating the magic of Christmas and second chances in The Santa Suit.

When newly-divorced Ivy Perkins buys an old farmhouse sight unseen, she is definitely looking for a change in her life. The Four Roses, as the farmhouse is called, is a labor of love — but Ivy didn't bargain on just how much labor. The previous family left so much furniture and so much junk, that it's a full-time job sorting through all of it.

At the top of a closet, Ivy finds an old Santa suit — beautifully made and decades old. In the pocket of a suit she finds a note written in a childish hand: it's from a little girl who has one Christmas wish, and that is for her father to return home from the war. This discovery sets Ivy off on a mission. Who wrote the note? Did the man ever come home? What mysteries did the Rose family hold?

Ivy's quest brings her into the community, at a time when all she wanted to do was be left alone and nurse her wounds. But the magic of Christmas makes miracles happen, and Ivy just might find more than she ever thought possible: a welcoming town, a family reunited, a mystery solved, and a second chance at love.