Building the Write Christmas Romance
In 2024, I recorded a bunch of different Christmas movies. I mostly resisted trying to watch any of these for several years, but I finally gave in. Not that I watched any of them before Christmas, but I dove in early in 2025 with A Carpenter Christmas Romance, one of Lifetime’s movies.
This movie introduces us to Andrea Metcalf (Sasha Pieterse), a writer who is about to release the final book in her bestselling Romantasy series. However, a major spoiler for the last book has released, and her fans aren’t happy, to put it mildly. At her sister’s suggestion, she heads to their aunt’s farm in a small town to finish her edits and hide out from the reaction.
However, when Andrea arrives, she finds the farm isn’t quite as deserted as she expected. Her high school crush, Seth Ferguson (Mitchell Slaggert), is using it sometimes while his place is being worked on. While Andrea and Seth reconnect, she also learns about what happened to the town when a fire hit it a couple years before. But will Seth sidetrack Andrea from finishing her book?
I’m always curious when a writer is the main character if the people who wrote the screen play have no clue how publishing works. Even I, a diehard reader but not a writer, knows that at least part of the plot of this movie is wildly unrealistic. It would have been easy enough to change it so that it was realistic, too. But that’s a minor point.
Let’s face it, the plot of this movie is fairly predictable. I’m sure I’ll be saying that about most of the movies still on my DVR. It wasn’t that the movie was bad, but it also wasn’t that creative or fresh either. Having said that, the ending did move me more than I was expecting.
The acting is good. It suffers at times from poor writing, but I believed what I saw on the screen.
The movie shows the two getting into bed together and waking up together the next morning. While not a choice I would make, they are consenting adults. My issue with it is more when it happens story wise and the point they are at in their relationship.
Unfortunately, I watched it in the middle of the 2025 wildfires we were having here in Southern California. That made the plot points surrounding the town being burned hit differently.
I was also surprised by the lack of snow. Maybe I missed a line about where the town is located in CA, but we do have places that get snow in the state. Still, it was kind of nice to see a Christmas movie without snow on the ground.
A Carpenter Christmas Romance is a decent enough way to spend a couple of hours if you are looking for a mindless Christmas movie. But it isn’t one to rush out to see.
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