[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
Full disclosure: I have a soft spot for the Lifetime Nora Roberts adaptations, so it’s high praise when I tell you that Hallmark Movies & Mysteries takes a page out of that successful film franchise with Sandra Brown’s White Hot, a relatively darker mystery outing when weighed against the bar of the Murder She Baked and Garage Sale Mystery series. It’s still Hallmark chaste, just less bubbly.
Shenae Grimes-Beech headlines as Sayre Hoyle, an interior designer who fled her Louisiana hometown right of high school and never looked back. A decade later, when her brother is killed, she’s drawn home from San Francisco and compelled to investigate his death. That puts her on the warpath with her estranged father, Huff (John Schneider), and his corporate attorney, Beck Merchant (Sean Faris). While she remains at loggerheads with the former, she starts to see the latter as more than her father’s pawn.
Grimes-Beech, Faris, and Schneider have all done stints on Hallmark–the first two in the Christmas-themed Christmas Incorporated and Christmas with Holly and the latter with Come Dance at My Wedding. By all accounts, this looks like a one-off film vs. a kick-off of Sandra Brown properties. I haven’t read Brown’s books, but I’d welcome more standalone mystery fare now and again outside of the recurring franchises just to keep things interesting. This is a good start.
I’ve been a fan of Faris since Life As We Know It, so I’m always game to watch him, and Grimes-Beech is solid as a woman torn between who she was and who she is as she revisits her childhood memories through the clearer lens of adulthood.
Sandra Brown’s White Hot premieres Sunday at 9/8c on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Here’s a sneak peek.
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