In the new Hallmark Channel movie A Season to Blossom, an aspiring writer who’s ready to give up on her dreams of writing a novel finds a renewed passion for books when she moves back to her hometown. Emily Tennant plays Elise, a woman who thinks she’s only coming back for a few weeks to sell the bookstore her grandmother owned, but after reconnecting with an old crush and helping to organize the local apple blossom festival, she feels more excited and creatively inspired than she has in a long time and decides that maybe she should stick around for a while.
The Gist: Elise (Tennant) is an aspiring novelist but she’s stuck in a years-long writer’s block. After giving up on her dreams and accepting a position working for a nameless corporate overlord, she tells her new boss she needs a few weeks to return to her hometown to sell the bookstore her recently-deceased grandmother ran.
Elise heads back to her charming town to settle the affairs of the bookstore just at the annual apple blossom festival is getting under way. The festival is something her grandmother always participated in, and Elise gets roped in to helping out, too, despite the fact that she was just there to sell the bookstore and move on. Also participating in the festival is Max (Carlo Marks), Elise’s childhood crush, whose family owns the local apple orchard. As Elise and Max reconnect, she also gets more deeply involved with planning the festival that brings her closer to her other neighbors in the community who welcome her.
She and Max both aspire to bigger things, she with her writing, and he wants to turn his orchard into a cider business. They encourage each other’s dreams and things turn romantic, which is why Max is surprised when Elise admits she’s still planning to hightail it out of town after the festival, he thought they were building something special together. When a major storm hits and threatens the festival, the two join forces to rebuild the orchard and their relationship. By the end, Elise realizes she doesn’t need to leave this special community to make her creative dreams come true.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? I can’t help but compare A Season to Blossom to that other classic movie about a quaint bookstore-centered rom-com, You’ve Got Mail. Thematically, the movies are very different, but the protagonists are both idealistic, book loving women who refuse to let go of their personal or professional dreams and find love along the way.
Performance Worth Watching: EaeMya ThynGi plays Molly, the woman running the bookstore when Elise arrives, and adds some personality and warmth to toe movie.
Sex And Skin: Most Hallmark movies are completely devoid of any sex or skin, but this one actually has an unexpected bare-chested moment (a man’s bare chest, in case that wasn’t obvious).
Our Take: A Season to Blossom features a classic Hallmark movie trope, maybe the signature Hallmark movie trope, a city gal who returns to her country hometown, only to rediscover her love of the quiet life and find love while she’s there. There’s more to the story than that, mostly hingeing on Elise’s desire to write a great novel that’s as popular as the bestseller her old writing partner just put out, but those are the broad strokes. But what A Season to Blossom does really well is create a world in this quaint hometown that is so lovely, so full of kindly neighbors and charming country vibes that of COURSE Elise would be enticed to stay there, because dangit, it looks pretty nice. And lucky for her, returning home and reconnecting with the writing from her grandmother’s journal is what gives her own writing the spark it needs.
This is one of those “this is why we watch this kind of movie” movies, where there’s a truly comforting and appealing universe for these characters to inhabit. If only life were this easy, this rustic, this beautiful! Elise and Max are drawn to each other because their past friendship/flirtation was comfortable and familiar. Elise’s renewed love of the town is only enhanced by the fact that there are memories of her dead grandmother all around, reminding her to be optimistic and open to new possibilities. If we all (those of us living in the real world) could be so lucky as to reconnect with our creativity and find a loving partner after relocating to a place like this, I think we’d probably all move ASAP. Alas, since it’s fiction, simply watching the movie will have to deliver that dopamine hit.
Our Call: Rustic small town that rallies around its small businesses so that they can flourish? Kind neighbors who only want the best for each other? Is this some sort of dream world, some kind of utopian society? Nope, it’s just the tender optimism imparted by A Season to Blossom. If you need feel-good vibes in your life, STREAM IT!
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.