Status Updates From Owl Be Home for Christmas: ...

Update #3: The thing I can't figure out, and this is the real mystery of the book, is what the hell does the main character actually do? She's not medical, not an investigator, not an ornithologist, I don't think she's an employee of the hotel; she's related to people and has inserted herself into events of the book? She's not even a sleuth, she's just nosey.

Update #2: Everyone is very concerned about the temperature being in the mid-20s, weather in which I've camped and Midwestern folks wear shorts and hoodies. Characters talk about the black market as if it's a store you can go to. Main character makes a lot of mental notes; she'll never remember all of them. There is a Cline-ian impulse for characters to imitate pop culture characters, and then immediately explain it.

Check in #1: I am more than a third through the book and the mystery has just been introduced. This has happened multiple times in cozy Christmas mysteries. The mystery must be "when does the mystery get introduced?". Every character has an odd way of wording sentences; I've had to reread several. And why do we need references to Harry Potter (oh, the owls) and an Ernest Cline-ian reference to Gandalf?