A Suite Holiday Romance is a quintessential Christmas movie, in all the best ways. We’ve got a fancy New York hotel, a writer landing a great job for the holidays—complete with her own suite in said hotel, a meet-cute, a charming British love interest and “royalty.” What else could we ask for? Oh yes, romance.
We get that too, thankfully. And we get it through one of the most fun tropes, mistaken identity. Sabrina Post (Jessy Schram) is a writer who has been offered a dream job: writing the memoir of Grayson Westcott, a famous art dealer. That job comes with a paycheck and a stay in her own suite at the iconic Grand Fairbanks Hotel in New York City.
Meanwhile, Ian Turner (Dominic Sherwood) is a handsome British visitor she meets at the hotel bar. Ian assumes she’s another wealthy hotel guest. She thinks he’s a member of the British aristocracy, instead of what he actually is, the personal secretary of Lord Spencer Braxton, in town to oversee the installation of an exhibit featuring the Braxton Royal Jewels at the Avalon Museum.
Sounds basic, and it kinda is. But it’s basic in the ways all the best Christmas movies are. Schram and Sherwood have great chemistry as Sabrina and Ian, and Sabrina captures the best of the holiday romance heroines, that feeling that you can and will be made better by the magic of the season.
Of course, Christmas cannot solve all problems, but it sure can try! And in A Suite Holiday Romance, the holiday serves as the backdrop for Sabrina and Ian getting to know each other, even though they each think the other is someone other than who they truly are. Ironically, despite the mistaken identity, Sabrina and Ian truly do learn a lot about each other, to the point where we can say they know who the other is, deep down, even if they’re hiding some basic things from each other.
The movie then invites us to question what’s more important? Who are you on the inside, what you believe, what you dream of, or what you present to the world? And though, of course, for these two people to get a happily ever after, they have to come clean with each other, perhaps at that point, they already knew what mattered. And though I cannot recommend starting any relationship with a lie—especially a lie this big—as a setup for a romance, it kinda works.
Perhaps it’s because everything Schram does works, whether she’s playing Hannah Asher on Chicago Med or Sabrina Post here. Maybe it’s because Schram and Sherwood are so very convincing as two people who know each other despite not knowing the basic things about who the other is. Or maybe it’s because A Suite Holiday Romance just hits all the holiday romance tropes and makes us feel like there’s magic to be found during the holidays. Either way, this one left us smiling, and that’s all you can really ask for.
A Suite Holiday Romance is now available to stream on Hallmark+.
