I actually have a few new Christmas books from the library, but once I started Mary Kay Andrews’ The Santa Suit, I couldn’t quit. I realized I had read it last year when it was released, but it was a comfort read, a book about a woman who credits the discovery of a Santa suit for all the positive changes in her new community.

Ivy Perkins co-owned a successful marketing and public relations business in Atlanta with her husband, but following her divorce, she was ready for a radical change. She packed her car and her dog, Punkin, and headed to Tarburton, North Carolina after she bought a 106-year-old farmhouse and land sight unseen. Her realtor, Ezra Wheeler, was waiting there to show her around, but the house was in a little more need of care than she expected. She was eager to get rid of what the previous owners left behind. Then, she found a beautifully made Santa suit in a box in the closet, and heard that Bob and Betty Rae Rose’s house was “the Christmas house” for the mountain community. and Bob was Santa. And, in the pocket of that Santa suit was a note from decades earlier when a little girl named Carlette asked Santa to bring her dad home from Vietnam. As Ivy herself says, that note sends her “down a rabbit hole”.

Ivy starts asking questions about Carlette. She finds a young woman who works at the courthouse whose mother went to school with a Carlette. She searches for Carlette’s previous home, and meets Carlette’s grandfather, who hasn’t seen his granddaughter in years. That man leads her to a local candy shop, Langley Sweets, a store that could use some of Ivy’s marketing prowess if it’s going to stay in business after ninety years. One person seems to lead to another.

Ivy credits the Santa suit as she encounters people, and begins to open up to some of the residents in town. That suit and the note in the pocket sends her “down a rabbit hole”. She makes discoveries. She isn’t eager to celebrate Christmas or light the house as the town’s Christmas house, but she eventually realizes Christmas “had been here all along, waiting for her to discover it.” Ivy isn’t fond of sweets, but when she tastes a peppermint from Langley Sweets, a wise man tells her, “The taste of peppermint. It reminds me of Christmas. And hope.”

The Santa Suit is just that, a reminder of Christmas and hope. It’s worth rereading.

Personal note: Because it’s also about going “down a rabbit role”, I’m going to share. I’m always saying a book leads me down a rabbit hole, and I look up so much that’s in a book. So, here’s the doormat my sister, Linda, gave me for Christmas this year.

Mary Kay Andrews’ website is https://marykayandrews.com/

The Santa Suit by Mark Kay Andrews. St. Martin’s Press, 2021. ISBN 9781250279316 (hardcover), 210p.

FTC Full Disclosure – Library book