Maybe I’m jaded by The Ghost of Christmas Movies Past. When I originally saw the title for The Christmas Ring, I thought “Great. This is going to be another movie about a woman trying desperately to get her boyfriend to propose on Christmas.” Thankfully, I was wrong.

Kendra (Nazneen Contractor) is a writer for Quizzer.com. One day, she finds a beautiful engagement ring in an antique thrift store. After reading the inscription, she decides that she has to return the ring to the original owner.

Most romantic Christmas movies revolve around the romance. It isn’t about the bakery owner running her business or the real estate mogul finding the perfect spot for a Christmas shop. Sure, these may be the characters but they aren’t really the plot. The plot is usually more like “The bakery owner finds love under her sugar bowl” or something dumb like that. The jobs are there just to give the characters something to do. The Christmas Ring is surprisingly different.

Quizzier is obviously the movie version of Buzzfeed. They mostly do listicles or quizzes about what type of elf you are. Nothing particularly substantial. Kendra wants to take the site to the next level and write a human interest piece about her search for the original owner of this ring she found. Her boss is against it so Kendra takes some personal days to do the research herself. And, yes, the entire plot of the movie is the quest to find the owner of the ring and why the ring was in a thrift shop.

That’s not to say there is no romance in the movie. Michael (David Alpay) is one of the grandsons of the ring’s original owner and he helps Kendra with her search. There are a few moments between them but the story really isn’t about them. I really appreciated that there weren’t any attempts to force Michael and Kendra together. No one was trying to trick them into going on a date and it felt like the romance between them grew naturally. I mean, it was still super fast as the whole movie takes place in less than a week but it wasn’t anything that seemed out of the ordinary to me.

Would I recommend The Christmas Ring? Yes. It’s not a resounding YOU MUST WATCH THIS yes. Just a regular yes. This was not a terrible way to spend my time.