Claire (Alexandra Breckenridge) is a venture capitalist who lives in the big city but dreams of visiting the same small Vermont town that her mother once loved.

Andrew (Jamie Spilchuk) is the latest in a long line of blacksmiths and he also owns an independent bookstore in the same small Vermont town where all of his ancestors have lived.

Together….

THEY SOLVE CRIMES!

Okay, not really.  Christmas Around The Corner is a Lifetime Christmas movie, which means that there’s not a single crime to be committed.  For that matter, there’s none of the other things that we typically expect from a Lifetime movie.  There’s no seductive nannies.  There’s no duplicitous best friends.  No adultery.  No scheming.  No runaways.  Nope, that doesn’t happen on Lifetime around Christmas time.

Instead, the movie opens with Claire having some sort of major career setback.  I’m not really sure what the exact details were but it had something to do with the stock market and a downward pointing arrow and a party that none of her investors came to.  It was financial stuff, which I’ve never really been able to follow.  What’s important is that Claire decided to get out of New York and spend the holidays in that small town in Vermont.

(Yes, yes, I know.  Vermont.  I hate Vermont but I won’t go into that right now.)

Anyway, Andrew runs a bookstore that also rents out rooms or something like that.  Apparently, when you’re staying at the bookstore, you’re also expected to work in the bookstore.  I have such mixed feelings about that.  On the one hand, I would love to live over a bookstore.  And I probably wouldn’t mind working in a bookstore, as long as I was the owner and could basically spend all day bossing people around and having them rearrange the books.  I mean, that seems like it would be a lot of fun.  However, I just can’t imagine going on a vacation so I could work.

When Claire arrives in the town, she’s really looking forward to the annual Christmas festival but …. uh oh!  The festival has been cancelled!  In fact, due to tough times and bad weather, it would appear that no one in town has the Christmas spirit!  No one but Claire!

So, can Claire get the town to rediscover its love of Christmas?

Even more importantly, can she use her marketing background to show Andrew a better way to run his bookstore?  Of course, she can!  Unfortunately, it may all be for naught because Andrew is thinking about selling the bookstore!

Along the way, Andrew and Claire fall in love.  Can you blame them?  I mean, Andrews’s a blacksmith!  Soot is sexy.

As you might expect from a Lifetime Christmas film, Christmas Around The Corner is more than a little predictable but, at the same time, it’s a sweet movie.  The town looks beautiful and Alexandra Breckenridge and Jamie Spilchuk have a likable chemistry as the two leads.  As anyone who has ever watched a Lifetime Christmas movie knows, these films always have an older voice of wisdom who helps to bring everyone together.  This time, that voice of wisdom was provided by the veteran actress Jane Alexander and she did a good job with her role.  It’s a likable movie, which is really the main thing that can ever be asked of a movie like this.  It’ll make you feel happy and Christmas-y.

Because, after all, Christmas is right around the corner!