The Secret Gift of Christmas (2023)

It's the approach to Christmas, the busiest time of year for personal shopper Bonnie Parker, who goes above and beyond to ensure that the gifts she buys, while matching the clients' briefs, are meaningful to the recipients. She doesn't realize it, but she uses shopping for herself, buying things she doesn't need and will never use, to fill the emotional holes in her life, the biggest hole created by the death of her mother and the imminent remarriage of her father. While already busy, she accepts a new last minute client, Patrick Armstrong, she actually hired by Patrick's new assistant, Bernard, who located Bonnie via social media. A contractor with his own thriving company, Patrick, while realizing he needs her services in he consumed by work while needing to buy gifts for his clients, his employees, his tween daughter Phoebe, and some clothes for himself, doesn't appreciate her going that extra mile in the things she buying on his behalf outside of his "jeans and t-shirts" comfort zone, and as such the two quietly butt heads. But as he sees the benefit in the personalization of those gifts, he begins to see Bonnie in a different light. Conversely, Bonnie sees Patrick in a new light in realizing that his demeanor is not uncaring as she first thought, but is of a widowed single father trying to manage raising a daughter on his own while providing for her in maintaining his business. As Bonnie and Patrick start to open up to each other, their path to a happy ending has the hurdle in some misunderstandings, especially the place that Phoebe's music teacher, Fiona Appleby, who has long been attracted to Patrick herself, has in his life.—Huggo