UNWRAPPING BOOKS PICKS WHAT I READ! 🎁wrapped up revamped - episode 4! january reading vlog

Welcome to another episode of Wrapped Up! As some of you know, we had this series ongoing in December and I really enjoyed doing it. It helps me read more because it's only, it's only one book for a vlog so it doesn't feel very intimidating and I basically made a decision that at least for the first couple months of the year, at least for the first half of the year, we're gonna continue the series. I know, I hear you all cheering right now. So we're gonna keep doing it once a month and this was actually supposed to be happening later in January, like towards the end of January, but like I am struggling, struggling to read. This is exactly what I was afraid of. Like it's just not happening for me at the start of the year. I'm like four books behind schedule, like it's not good, like it needs to change. So I thought I would bump this up because you love it, I love it, we all love it and let's read a book. Let's pick a book and wrap it and read it, okay? So these are still all 2021 new releases that I haven't read. I feel like when we first did it, we were unwrapping a lot of hardbacks. I'm feeling like a paperback today and I'm also feeling like green. Why is she green? Well, Tamar, have you ever watched the show? Okay, what green paperbacks? This one or this one? I hate it. I *******, I hate choosing these so I feel so nervous. Okay, I'm gonna go with this one because this one's quite short and so I feel like we may not have like much to talk about in a vlog. So this one's a bit longer. Oh my god. So let's go with this one, okay? Can you see what it is? Yeah. Oh my god! I am so happy! Okay, so we've got The Appeal by Janice Hallett which is one of the books I was most excited to read in general this year, like to get to this year. I am so, so excited for this. So if you don't know, this is a murder mystery in this quaint English town but it's told entirely through emails and texts and letters and stuff like that. So the whole book is told through emails etc. So I feel like this is actually the perfect thing for me right now because I feel like it will probably get me out of my kind of slump that I've had at the start of the year quite quickly. And oh my god, I feel blessed. Wrapped Up is really kind to me. I feel like Wrapped Up just like gets me. Also Janice Hallett's next one is coming out like I think in the next couple months so I'm glad I'm gonna get to read this, figure out if I like her stuff and then I can keep reading her stuff if I do. Oh my god! Okay, I'm gonna go to the gym now and then I will come back and hopefully start reading this this evening. Okay so before we get into it, I just need to clear the room. You know, I need to get something off my chest. So obviously you saw me unwrap this, okay? But I since went and I bought this. So I never do this, okay? I just want to say like I never buy another edition of a book even before I've read it, right? But my mum had read this and she just like got on sh!t on it and it just made me sad reading it. So I went and I bought the hardcover. This didn't exist when I bought this otherwise I would have never bought this. I love hardbacks more. This is like kind of cloth-y. I just love it. I just absolutely love it. It brings me so much more joy. I didn't spend any money on it because I had Waterstones credit so I didn't even spend any money and I got this for half price anyway. So really I've spent less buying these two books than this cost, normally. So I don't want to hear any critiques. I don't want to hear any critiques. I don't want to hear anything. To haters, I'm not your enemy, I'm your hero. You know, cheer up. You should be happy I'm here. But now I'm gonna- this arrived this morning so now I'm gonna be reading from this one. Let's chat about this. So The Appeal, we are in this quaint English town, very agnostic Christy, and we're actually following this group of people which is like an adult amateur drama society where they put on shows. And I actually- part of this is so fun for me to to read is when I was a kid, I was in the kids version of an adult theatre society like this. That's what I went to to go act. And so I remember the kinds of people you would get in these groups. It's often more elderly people and you often have a lot of families in it like parents and children and that's what this is like. So like I'm like, just tell us how it lived near me. Like is this based off of what I know? It's a conspiracy theory that I'm actually interested in. Or is this just a very like common occurrence? So it's making it really fun for me to read because I'm like, I know these people. When there's like a meddling like uptight person, I know who that is. When there's a family situation and how that makes it a bit awkward for everyone else, like I know this. I've lived this, so that's really fun for me to read. And it is told entirely through mostly emails. There's a few text messages. I feel like some of the characters, I'm like, you wouldn't be emailing each other. Like the younger characters, I'm like, why are we doing emails here? Like that doesn't really make sense to me, but like I'll take it, we'll go along with it, whatever. I'm 100 pages in, so I feel like it's taken me up until now recently to like get a hold of what's happening and to kind of understand everything. It definitely took me a while to like understand all the different characters we've got going on. It reads very fast, so it's not like a hundred pages of a normal book. Do you know what? A normal book. Like a traditionally written book. Do you know what I mean? It's very different. It's like a much faster paced reading experience. You're having to read between the lines a lot, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm loving the setting, like I said. The characters, we've got a very big cast of characters, but it's super interesting and we are kind of reading from the perspective of these two detectives who are going through this with us and trying to figure it out. Now, I already have some theories as to what's going on, but I feel like those theories are gonna get solved pretty quickly and we're gonna constantly kind of have new mysteries going on throughout it. We don't even know what the case or what the death, I assume there's a death involved in this, like who that is or what's happened. We don't know any of that. We've really started from the beginning and so we're kind of going through the before. Do you know what I mean? It's not like a normal mystery where like the murders happened and the rest of the book is trying to solve it. This is like leading up to the murder, which I actually really enjoy. I've read a few books that have done that and I've always really enjoyed them, so I'm really enjoying it so far. I can't tell yet if it's gonna be like a four or a five. It's kind of feeling like a four at the moment, but like I said, we're very much at the beginning, so it could really go anywhere and I'm really enjoying the kind of unique sense of storytelling. So yeah, all I've got to do today is really read this book. So I'm just gonna go ahead and chill out and read some of this. Okay, so it's much later. I've been for a run, so excuse the hair. That's just like, I don't even know what it's looking like on camera. I should have kept my mouth closed. So I realised when I last checked in with you, I did not tell you the plot of this. I just neglected to tell you the plot. So basically, the granddaughter of the kind of heads of the drama group, I think she's got a rare form of cancer. She's only two years old and they basically launch an appeal to raise £250,000 for her to get this drug treatment that is not approved on the NHS yet, but like is being sold as the cure for her basically. From the beginning, I was like, I don't trust these bitches. Like her family, you know, like the adults. Because it's obvious they're the head honchos. They are the head honchos. Like they control the beating heart of the socialising in this tight-knit community. Do you know what I mean? Like they're the rich bitches. So first of all, I'm like, there's a weird power dynamic here. And second of all, I'm like, you have money. That hasn't really been covered yet that much. But I'm like, you have money. Like, I don't trust you. But I feel like in this book, something that's doing really well is making us not trust everyone. Like there's a big character list and I could go down almost everyone and be like, here's why I don't trust this person. But I kind of don't want to get into all of them. I was over here like 10 years. And one of the main characters we're following is this strange character called Izzy, who is like obsessed, like obsessed with this other character called Sam. Just go away. Oh, literally obsessed with me. Here's the thing. Reading from Izzy's perspective a lot, she writes, this girl writes a lot of emails and she's annoying. Like it's annoying to read. Like I, it's not, I'm like, after page 100, I was like, I get the point. You know what I mean? I was like, I understand. Like she's annoying, but like I don't need to read it over and over again. It's not like a five star for me right now. It's probably about a four. It's, it's strange, right? I almost think I need to read Janice Hallett's next book to kind of get used to this style where other books I've read have been mixed media, but haven't been solely like one form of media pretty much. Other books, say The Good Girl's Guide to Murder has mixed media elements interspersed. Well, the Illuminae series has mixed media, but it's a lot of different forms of mixed media, right? Whereas this is all emails. It's just email after email after email with occasional text messages sent in, but they're not that different to the emails. And like constantly read, all I'm reading is people's email tone. Do you know what I mean? Like you write emails in a different tone to that you speak or to you text or you whatever, you know? And it's a bit like, it's a lot, you know? Like I wish this could have been not just emails, which I'm intrigued as to whether Janice Hallett's next one is only emails or if maybe it has other mixed media because that's what I feel like this is crying out for. I mean actually, I lied to you, there's been like one, one or two police reports maybe, but that has literally been it. One or two newspaper articles, but like when I'm talking I want a variety. I think like every other, you know, everything should be different. You're constantly going into different forms of mixed media if your whole book is going to be mixed media. And so it's getting a little bit like a lot. Like it's getting a little bit like, okay, like constantly reading in people's email tone of voice that they use is strange. This is not for me, no. I don't know and I don't know if I love that element of it, but I will say I love how this book is really keeping you on your toes because you don't have like a detective or a narrator to kind of affirm things you find out. You kind of have to find like clues out, you have to read between the lines and you have to make, you have to assure yourself that the conclusion you reach from that piece of information is right, rather than in a mystery having a detective get a piece of information and then a detective coming to the conclusion. You're kind of like having to do that for yourself, which is a very interesting reading experience as well. So I am enjoying it, but it's just like the emails are a lot. Like I wish there was some stuff that weren't emails. And I'm kind of ready for the murder to happen. You know right from the beginning it's in the kind of synopsis that a murder is going to happen. And I'm like girlies, the tension is rising, let's get a killing because it feels like we just need something to move the story on a bit. It's not a five star, which I feel like I'm a bit disappointed that it's not. I feel like maybe you can tell my demeanor because I wanted this to be an all-time favourite. And it could be, like it could turn it around in this last bit and just go absolutely ape ----, but I'm still really enjoying it. So I feel like me sounding disappointed doesn't do it justice because I still are having a great time reading it. I just wanted it to be like an all-time favourite, if that makes sense. If I speak I am in big trouble. In big trouble. So, **** it. I am disappointed. I'm just gonna throw it out there. I'm just gonna say it. I'm just gonna say it. 3.5 stars. It's not the vibe, stop! I'm giving it 3.5 stars, okay? 3.5. For me, I think in the end the repetitiveness of the emails, it got a bit old for me. The structure of the story actually didn't work for me. You know, the murder happens at probably the 75% mark and then we suddenly stop having emails and we get into this really long document that the two like detectives or are they lawyers? I don't even know. Yes, these two law students are writing to try and like propose what they think happened. And so then that is repetitive and then like I feel like at no stage in the book was there enough variation. There was like clear blocks in like what was being written, do you know what I mean? But like I feel like everything should have been mixed together a bit more, like something that I feel like The Guest List, for example, did so well. In one perspective we're in the past following up to the day of the wedding when there is a death and in the other perspective you're on the night of the wedding trying to figure out what's going on and that worked so well because you are, you are leading up to the death, the murder like we are in this one, but you're also in the present sometimes. I just feel like this book was a bit too, it felt a bit stagnant. It felt a bit stuck in itself at points for me. And that's the truth. But I will say I really loved the experience of reading it, like I read this so fast you could not pry it off my hands. I was flying through it and I still had a great time reading it, but I don't come out of it going, oh I really loved that or I really, really enjoyed it and I can't see many flaws with it. Like there are some flaws for me so that's why it's a 3.5. But funnily enough like I am really excited, like really, really excited to read the author's next book which has just come out which I think is more to do with codes and stuff like that. I think before I buy it I may go have a look at it in person and see kind of what the layout on the inside is like because it just felt like it needed a bit more variation throughout for me. I will say I thought the resolution to the murder was a good one, it was one that felt satisfying. Yeah I don't know, I feel like this had a lot of possibility but it just didn't quite hit the mark and I don't think this is a good place to start with murder mysteries if you haven't read a lot of them because the structure is a little bit confusing. Like the kind of getting all of these emails and leading up to the death but the death taking like 75% to happen, I don't think it's conducive to like starting with murder mysteries. But a lot of people have loved this, this has been super successful but for me it just it just missed the mark. I feel like I am becoming a little more picky with murder mysteries though, perhaps if I had read this when I was a bit more of a newbie to the genre or to the you know the idea of that of those books I would have enjoyed it more but I feel like I've just seen this done better and I also felt like some of the tropes and some of the reveals were a little bit like stereotypical, were a little bit like I've seen this story before whereas with my murder mysteries I know it's really hard but I want the reveals to be something a little bit new. So yeah I really enjoyed reading it, I'm really excited to read the author's next book but I was still disappointed and I did still feel a little bit let down by the book. So listen we're still a little bit sad because this was like a beyond a five-star prediction for me. I'm still glad I got this edition because I love it so much more and I really like I'm gonna it's gonna bring me joy seeing this on my shelves regardless but yeah I don't know I'm really sad because this was like beyond a five-star prediction for me it was like a 10-star prediction and it wasn't that but it's okay listen like I said I'm gonna continue reading anything this author writes because it's still it's really hard to find modern murder mysteries do you know what I mean? So yeah that's where we're ending it I'm sorry guys if you wanted better from me but that's what we're getting um if you've gone to the end leave a red heart emoji because I love this edition so leave a red heart emoji if you've gone to the end let me know if you thought of this if you read it I know a lot of you have read it like from not my recommendation but from me talking about it and a lot of you've been commenting recently like some of you saying you loved it some of you saying you found it a bit disappointing so I'd love to know what you thought um if you read it especially in response to what I've said and thank you so much for watching and I'll see you very soon in another video bye!