Hallmark holiday movies turn this otherwise-Christmas-lover into quite the Scrooge. I absolutely hate them — and for all the obvious reasons: Their premises are ludicrous and dialogue labored, turning every predictable storyline into a corny cliche.
So you can imagine my dismay when I realized my own “original” love story is nothing more than one bad Hallmark plot, and here’s the pitch.
The city-dwelling female protagonist (me) is forced into a small town (my childhood home in the Midwest backwoods) due to an unforeseen catastrophe (coronavirus) when she meets a man who will change her life. A Christmas surprise (a
