UNWRAPPING BOOKS PICKS WHAT I READ! 🎁wrapped up revamped - episode 7! june reading vlog

[Music] hello my loves welcome back to another video today we're doing the next episode of wrapped up so many of y'all know wrapped up there's a series i do on my channel where i have last year's releases that i still haven't read my 2021 releases i have them all wrapped up and we unwrap one in a vlog and we read it together it's essentially the premise now i do let myself nowadays unwrap two if i want if i wrap the first one i'm like i don't know i can have another go and if i'm still not filling them i have to read one of them but let's just let's just give it a go let's give it a go um i think i'm just special special i couldn't be bothered to move them out this is where they live like and i usually move them out onto the bed to like film that clip but i can be bothered today like i got places to be i i was like let's just sit in front of it this is always so hard um think of these videos i want something short because i always want something short but i don't want something too short because it has to hold a vlog on its own so we feel like this paperback looks like a good length what do we think oh my goodness let's just unwrap it let's just unwrap it okay this is fun this is theater of marvel's by it says leanne dillsworth on here i this is an arc i got sent i believe the finished version it might be lm dilsworth like the author name but yeah this came out i think in may this month so i'm not too late everyone we're following this girl who she's in a circus theater essentially she finds out i think it's set in like victorian london which i've been craving something actually i was watching okay you're gonna clown me for this um ah you guys got dragged me for this huh okay i like watching mapman or jforman not mad men he's jay foreman that's his youtube channel i've loved watching for years and he does so he's doing a series at the moment of bridges in london and i won something set in london at the time that like ships were coming in and out of the thames and it was like london was growing i don't think this is this is a bit after that but i'm interested in london there's location anyway she finds out that women like connected to the circus keep disappearing essentially and she tries to investigate it and i'm just very excited i think this could definitely be my kind of thing so i'm really happy we're going to be reading it because it's taken me a hot minute to get around to it so i'm really really excited to give this a go so yeah i'll probably read how long is my copy my copy's about 400 pages so i'll probably read the first 100 pages and then check in with you on what my initial thoughts are right i usually film with a ring light i haven't even got the ring light out for this clip because i'm i'm 100 pages in and the car going past i'm beyond caring i'm v this vlog is about to be a mess i am sorry in advance i'm not enjoying this at all oh no this has now gone downhill and palmy's like megan dnf and choose another book but this was sent to me i feel like i was excited for such a long time so we're gonna stick it out and we're gonna read the whole thing okay i'm cutting my head off let's like scooch that up a bit okay uh not enjoying it so we are following zilla who works as this kind of like i think her name is like the amazonia at this circus and she doesn't feel anything wrong with that but there's some a guy comes into her life he comes to view the show who kind of uh wants to ask her to question her playing this like savage african queen in the circus and she's like you know it's it's my life this is what i do yada yada she keeps saying to him i was born free i was born free and whenever there's like uh black beggars and stuff that she sees in the street she goes well i'm not like them i'm not like them she's kind of courting this rich by count or maybe i'm just thinking that's his name's vincent anyway this rich dude and so she's like that ain't my life so i already know this book is gonna deal a lot with like you know racial identity particularly in this time in the in britain when she's mixed race and she views herself as different and almost better than you know the people that came over as slaves and stuff like that but the thing i'm not enjoying about it is her voice it's very voicey what am i like the maid was very voicey that i read lately there's there's something i read lately i'm like daggers how dare you drive your car in the street yeah i feel very attacked something i read lately that i didn't like that was voicey because it was voicey but i can't remember what like where you're really in this protagonist's head it's my mic on yeah i'm really in this protagonist's head and all of what moves the plot along is like their hopes and desires and opinions there's not much like inciting incidents if they are it's all to do with what they're going to think about and what they feel and she just strikes me as like the best way i can just describe it is head in the clouds like it's reading but also things are happening in it like her and her and her guy getting it on getting it on and but i mean it's not like on page but it's like you know we got into bed naked and after we made love and all this stuff there's just parts of it that aren't gelling for me if it's reading young like for 13 year olds in my opinion you wouldn't expect that to be in there i felt like from like a writer publisher point of view she's just like so naive for the betterment of the plot like to allow the plot to do what the author wants it to do and i hate that in books i hate when they're like oblivious like oh thinking in a way with no nuanced thought like a human being would i don't think i really like dumb i don't like calling her dumb i don't want i don't want to to uh correlate mixed feelings with being you know part of a black diaspora and um the situations around her her black eyes with her being dumb not calling that i'm correlating it with her like work perspective her perspective with this guy just like everything and the way she speaks is just very naive and i'm just i'm already not enjoying it so yeah that's a great great update i'm just gonna try and read it as quickly as possible because i want june to be a great reading month and just to read loads and i feel like i need to love reading you know i yeah anyway i don't know i'm just not feeling it i'm not feeling it and i should because i love the kind of victorian london setting the fact that it's subverting a lot of the issues we often see discussed but um my gal is annoying me she's annoying me i'm gonna try and read maybe like another 150 pages and then i'll get back to what my new thoughts are [Music] i don't even want to talk i really dislike this book like i i really dislike it predominantly how it's written and here's the thing i'm sitting here and i'm reading the book right the hair um and i'm thinking to myself like i don't wanna rag on this book i don't wanna [ __ ] on this book right it's you know a debut woman of color author writing about mixed race identity and black identity in this time period and i don't want to [ __ ] on it but i don't enjoy it so like should we come out and you know if it was in a multiple book vlog i could maybe like gloss over my thoughts on it not gloss over but like not highlight them as much but this is this vlog is it so like what am i supposed to do it reminds me a lot of a book i read called uh i didn't even read it i dnf'd like 50 pages in the court of miracles by kester grant where the writing just reads so dumb down like so dumbed down here's the thing right in the back it's compared to fans to authors sorry jesse burton bridget collins stacy halls who are all adult historical fiction authors so i feel like this is it's supposed to be an adult but it reads like young why a but with speaking of like essay and uh you know adult matters happening in this book i'm gonna look on waterstones and see what it's shelved as fiction general fiction is it an adult book it's a conspiracy theory that i'm actually interested in it's gotten so many good reviews though so like is it just me let me look at a why a book let's look at shadow and bone yeah it would show us like children's teen and why a if it was why this is adult is it what i don't understand what's going on i truly do not understand what is going on uh i just it was pitched as well as a woman goes missing in london and our protagonist wants to get to the the bottom of it but she hasn't right she meets she works at the circus the owner of the circus wants to show this new exhibit and it's a woman i won't get into what it is for spoilers it's a woman and she wants to speak to the woman and find out more about her and she just doesn't know where the woman is like is living so she's not missing girlie just doesn't know where she is and so i thought it'd be more i thought a woman was killed and i thought it was like solving murders of of girls in these positions like of positions of of poverty or of lack of social standing who were kind of getting killed as like when uh jack the ripper's victims were killed everyone was like oh they're prostitutes you know when they weren't read the five by halle rubenhold check the facts receipts america yeah i thought it was gonna be about that but it's not like she's just like there's some shady [ __ ] going on and she's gonna uncover it but like it's not that deep a mystery because she's like i just don't know where this was where this girl he is i don't know my mate is but like whatever whatever on that breaking point the examination i will say like i said of mixed race identity the information of her saying i you know her examination being born free is very interesting of how she's having to unpack how for many years she viewed herself as better because her mum instilled in her that you were she was born free and how she thought that made herself better than um slaves or ex-slaves is interesting i would say that's probably the most interesting part of the book there's interesting themes being examined in this but i'm just not enjoying the process or the writing or the character or any of that i also think like the characters in it are very predictable very you know you know what purpose they're going to serve in the story when you when they come into it like she's got a thing with this is why i count how i mentioned and you know how that's gonna turn out she meets this other man and you know how that's gonna turn out like it's all just so predictable for me she this is my number one thing whatever one thing that i hate about books she trusts characters that she barely knows to help her to with important information that could like ruin her life if it gets out she's going to them when the stakes aren't high enough to justify that i hate in books when things that aren't realistic or haven't haven't been set up right the foundation for that has not been laid you can't it's like in law you can't give me that argument you can't give me that plotline if you haven't laid the foundation the stakes are not high enough for her to risk everything by going to these people she's just like oh i know yeah i'm really nervous about doing this but let's just do it anyway and like i said like it's super voicey it's filled with overdramatic statements where she's like little did they know or i knew this was the moment and i whatever like it's just pissing me off i'm sorry and i don't want to say this i don't want to be [ __ ] on this book like i said for the reasons i said um and it's had pretty good reviews on goodreads i looked and there wasn't many negative reviews so maybe it's just me i don't know but um i really don't like it this is where my blood starts to boil at the moment it's like a two it won't get a one because it's not offensive to i only really give ones to books that are like offensive to me or like i feel no qualms about giving you one but you know morally morally i don't want to give this a one maybe a 1.5 because i gave the gilded ones a 1.5 and i feel similar this one perhaps is even more egregious because it reads like it's written for 14 13 year olds when it's being shelved by waterstones as an adult book and being comped to adult authors so what's the stitch you know what i mean anyway i'm gonna go finish this tonight hopefully i wanna just get it you know one and done i want it out of my life i'm barely reading it i mean i'm playing 2048 whilst i listen to the audiobook really fast by the way i just want you all to know does anyone remember the game 2048 i'll put the the logo in i'm in the top 8 in the world ever at that game i got the 4096 for a 9-6 i think tile i'm elite so at least this book is helping me get my training in we must be grateful for small mercies just as i'm literally started filming just i set my ring light up my next started playing music really loudly so if we can hear that i can't wait to film because it's half five this video is supposed to go up tonight so in like two hours so i can't even just like wait to film because i need to film this straight away so i can edit this anyway i finished theater of marvel's right at the last minute but um also hang on i've edited the rest of this video i kept calling it a circus it's not i knew it wasn't a circus i don't know why that was coming out my mouth uh the clue's in her name megan theater dum-dum i think i was thinking of circus of wonders theater of marvel's circus of wonders um and they're very similar you know victorian i'm gonna give it a one-and-a-half star i feel terrible i feel sick to my core i feel evil i am sorry right i'm really sorry i'm sorry to the publisher who sent me this book but i'm not about to lie i will say i found the topic interesting i have personally always found the lives of black people in victorian england a very interesting topic i think it's something that's often glossed over or just the history of black people in britain all the way into tudor times king henry viii this is off topic but can you hear it had like a trumpeteer who was quite prominent he was black so um it's a topic i find really interesting but i just could not get over the right i just didn't like the writing and it's had good reviews but me and it weren't robin right we weren't getting along and i'm sorry for that i'm sorry i apologize everyone i'm sorry but it wasn't for me i don't have much else to say to you that hasn't already been said my feelings in this last part were pretty much the same i feel like everything was too convenient once again there's like insta love in this i actually laughed out loud i was doing my makeup listening to it like what the [ __ ] but then it tries to be like i'm not like other insta loves um i'm different i'm not like other intellects and i kind of just left the book feeling like i didn't have much resolution and not much happened and like what was all of this i actually read all these words on pages but like what were those words i personally don't recommend it but like i said there's been good reviews so like maybe i'm just the outlier i don't know there's a lot of interesting thematic elements but the plot and the writing itself didn't vibe with me we clashed girlie we clashed we weren't busy mates we clashed so that brings us to the end of this vlog i'm like depressed this vlog has been like oh yeah i hate it like i couldn't even like tear it apart with something like some like survive the night we had as a wrapped up book and i feel like i can really rip into that because ronnie sega's fair game do you know what i mean like fair game but this is a you know debut author and i just feel horrible i feel like the worst person in existence so um i hope you enjoyed the video i have the vlog anyway if you've gotten to the end comment the dress emojis a lot of mentions of dresses and petticoats and outfits in this book so comment down below if you got to the end thank you so much for watching i love you and i'll see you soon love ya love ya um i love you very much and i'll see you very soon in another video bye [Music] you