This book was a MESS! XD The narrative "structure" was all over the place! Less scaffolding, and more a trash mobile: disconnected themes and plot devices swirling around a central character. Creatures and characters were seemingly introduced as foils, but then were either easily conquered or never actually featured in person (just in recollections from the narrator). Subsequent paragraphs would veer off on unrelated tangents, as if the narrator were easily distracted from telling her own story. Scenes were interrupted by a chapter break mid-dialogue, for no obvious reason. The "villain" has been "plotting" to kidnap the heroine for 15 years, but is only successful because of a crime of opportunity, and then runs amok playing pranks in Santa's workshop instead of making good on his "evil plan". The "heroine" has been dreaming of one day ditching Santa's workshop for "adventure in the great wide somewhere", but her "great escape" ends in her choosing to stay home and join the family business! She only leaves twice, and one of her "great escapes" is entirely underwhelming: She orders sushi and sings carols at a diner. FIRSTLY, my daddy always warned me: don't order fish at a diner! Secondly, she is supposed to be fleeing, why does she DAWDLE?! The only other time she leaves home, she trespasses on a bird sanctuary, and is the catalyst for a MASSIVE FIRE that destroys the park O____O. And this is glossed over as no big deal! WHAT?!?!? I don't care how much ennui this teenage girl had with playing Santa, she and her friends committed a CRIME, and do not deserve hot cider and cookies! Naughty List for life! The villain is campy, the heroine is a ripoff of Elsa, and I don't even want to get into the "romantic" lead, because he has less chemistry than an unvarnished plank of wood XD.

Which is a crying shame, because this author did WORK. She invented an alphabet, and wrote a music video, and interviewed people who actually live in Alaska for tips on how to write about their culture... But all that effort didn't make up for juvenile writing. It's as if a teacher assigned a group project on modern day Alaska, and one classmate wrote about the nature and wildlife, and one wrote about holiday and family traditions, and ONE - the author - covered the posterboard for the report with glitter and Frozen stickers and stick drawings of Santa and his elves!

This author had ideas, and just blurted them all out, and then never refined them into a cohesive, compelling story. And half of those ideas were cartoonish fun, but dangerous and misleading for a younger audience. The other half of those ideas just seemed to be autobiographical. You want to dress up as Elsa and sing Frozen karaoke? Go have fun!
But don't:
- Feed candy to polar bears. They are not pets. They are not children. Do not do.
- Build a bonfire in a bird sanctuary. Birds will die.
- Carry a broken snowglobe around in your backpack for a week. That s--- will leak everywhere.
- Keep your employees in an underground crypt and call it "free lodgings".
- Discover an underground crypt full of slave labor, and ignore it.
- Drink sour milk.

I could go on. I don't want to. This book was nonsense, and trying to draw sense from it in hindsight to make up for my wasted time, is just not going to happen. Save your pennies, folks. Skip this one. Go read The Golden Compass instead.