Review: The Santa Suit

The Santa Suit by Mary Kay Andrews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

“It’s a Santa suit,” Ivy whispered. 

Ivy's newly divorced after her husband left her for one of their marketing clients. With their house sold and her ex-husband buying out her half of the business, Ivy decides it's time for a change. She decides to buy an old farmhouse in a small city in North Carolina, leaving the big city of Atlanta. There an old Santa suit and mystery if a little girl got her wish, help Ivy rediscover the spirit of the holidays. 

Who was Carlette, she wondered, and her daddy? And had Santa brought him safely home? 

This was novella and I think the shorter page count worked to keep the pace up in what turned out to be Ivy's story of moving to a small town and gaining a foothold in life and rediscovering who she is. I've never read a Mary Kay Andrews before, so I was a little thrown by some of the little madcap additives she puts into her stories. They're small and if you blink, you could miss them but I'm someone who has weird focus on things like that. There's Ivy buying her 106 yr old farmhouse sight unseen (because she wanted chickens?? and then painting a room the color of said chickens eggs), a bestfriend marrying the wife of his fallen comrade (possible cheating), and a plumber who does jobs on the down low to hide from his wife the child support he pays his girlfriend. These little add-ins created a slightly kooky tone that paired with Ivy's acerbic tones to give the story a slightly off-kilter feel. 

For Ivy, being in love meant being vulnerable to pain and betrayal. 

When I pick up a holiday book, I anticipate some holiday cheer and warm, sweet atmosphere, this kind of threw me for loop with Ivy having the tone of a Scrooge but doing kind actions. When Ivy finds the letter to Santa from a little girl from the 1970s, asking Santa to please bring her dad home safe, she wants to find out if the little girl got her wish. This brings her in to interacting with the townspeople and we get our secondary characters. Phoebe overhears Ivy asking questions and says her mom might know the little girl “Carlette”. Ivy and Phoebe becomes friends and we get too much of a butt-in with Phoebe's online romance and catfishing shenanigans. Ivy also finds the grandpa to Carlette and we find out a big chunk of the answers Ivy was looking for. My favorite relationship was between Ivy and the grandpa Lawrence, they seemed to share the most and have a relationship that felt warm and believable. 

Being a novella, the romance definitely felt the absence of shorter page count. Ivy's realtor, Ezra, had a personality that did not endear me to him, he comes off dismissive to Ivy with showing up whenever he wants and because we don't really know anything about him, he's a blank slate that doesn't help me to see the desirable in him as a partner for Ivy. This is more along the lines of women's fiction, the bedroom door is shut but the story leaves with them being together. There was a surprise revelation at the end but I wish I had known the character and son more to really enjoy it. This felt like a wild ride with some of the additive choices but if you're a frequent reader of Andrews, you might not even notice them. Even though this takes place in North Carolina and you won't get any snowy scenes, there was still plenty of holiday activities and scenery to enjoy if you're a seasonal reader.

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