I wanted to write a blog about HOW I was asked to write a review for the movie Home for Christmas, so that’s what you are going to find here.

If you are looking only for the movie review, click this link.  Otherwise, continue on to the backstory.

In a nutshell, social media is a very funny thing.

I’m pretty active on Twitter.  (If you don’t follow me and want to, you can find me as @LauraCKilmartin.) The great thing about Twitter is that you can follow other very funny, clever people, and retweet their thoughts to your followers.  Retweeting is the social media equivalent of saying “What he said…”, and yet people give you credit for being funny and clever, as if you’d originated the thoughts in the first place.

Anyway…

Last week I was looking around for new funny and clever people to follow on Twitter.  Since I use it as a marketing tool for my book, I generally look for other writers, readers who enjoy similar genres or basically anything related to the whole chick lit/ romantic comedy industry.

One of the Twitter users I followed was the official account for a new romantic comedy called, “Home for Christmas.”  It looked fun, and since Love, Actually is one of my favorite movies I figured I couldn’t go wrong by following a British holiday film.

A little while later, the Home For Christmas account followed me on Twitter.  Not unusual for Twitter etiquette, but it did give me a bit of a thrill that an independent film was following me.  Not quite as exciting as the times that  Henry Winkler and Lou Diamond Phillips retweeted me, but still…

Then a few minutes later, I got a message from Home for Christmas asking me if I would be interested in watching and reviewing the movie.

Um…. YEAH! Watch a movie for free that isn’t even going to be released for another week?

It wasn’t until they forwarded me a secure link to the movie that I began to panic. What would happen if I didn’t like the movie? It wasn’t like they were paying me or even offering me anything other than a free movie, but would I feel any obligation to give a good review?

Luckily, that was not an issue in the least.

Home for Christmas is an adorable, clever romantic comedy that you should definitely make a point to see when it is released on Friday.  It was a delight to watch and write a review, and now that I have been introduced to the actors who starred in it, I will be keeping an eye on their careers which deserve to skyrocket.

I will probably even start following them on Twitter!