I was really excited about The Holiday Calendar and I had it down on my Netflix list as soon as it was announced. Netflix has, so far not disappointed me when it comes to its romantic comedies — (The Kissing Booth, Set It Up, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before). I had great hopes that the Holiday Calendar would deliver a similar feel, especially when it had the advantage of a Christmas setting. Unfortunately, it kind of fell short of its predecessors — by a lot. And I am more disappointed than anyone.

Synopsis: Aspiring photographer Abby Sutton (Kat Graham) has been friends with Josh (Quincy Brown) for her entire life. However, while they both had similar dreams , Josh went to travel the world and became a famous travel blogger while Abby stayed behind to work at a small studio, bitterly taking holiday pictures of families in her hometown. When Josh comes back to town to get settled with Abby, she meets a new man with the help of her grandmother’s magical advent calendar and she believes that she might have finally found true love.

The premise of The Holiday Calendar was super simple. From the first two minutes, viewers knew who Abby should end up with because Josh wears his heart on his eyes. Plus everybody loves him. So the problem was how to lengthen the story enough to make a feature film when the ending was already obvious from the get go. The solution: add a third party in the form of small town doctor Ty (Ethan Peck) .

However, the problem with The Holiday Calendar was that there was really no chemistry between Abby and Ty and every seeming flirtation seemed hard to watch. Perhaps the film succeeded too well in introducing Josh as the leading man that audiences already feel loyal to him from the beginning and hate Abby for being too dense to see her best friend as the perfect boyfriend. That was precisely how I felt and pretty soon, I was thinking that Josh was too good for Abby anyway.

It also doesn’t help that Abby acted like a jerk to Josh when he causes an accident that makes audiences think twice about rooting for them despite their great on-screen rapport. In part, I also believed Abby was holding it against Josh that he got out of their town and she didn’t, and used the accident as an excuse to lash out at him — which was pretty unfair. I mean, as a best friend, not even reading a single one of his blogs is unforgiveable. Even one and that speaks for a lot about what type of friend she was.

All in all, The Holiday Calendar was a fail for me because I felt by its end that I didn’t want them to end up together after all. While everything was explained in the end and Josh was too in love with Abby to care that she treated him like trash, I for one, could not find it in my heart to be happy at their happy ending. I think Abby should have suffered a bit more to even the score before Josh forgave her so the ending could have been more acceptable. And this is probably why I have no lovelife of my own. LOL. Happy holidays, everyone!