UNWRAPPING BOOKS PICKS WHAT I READ.. AGAIN📚reading a super anticipated book! wrapped up reading vlog

I predicted this from the 100 page mark. Thoughts about this book? I had them. Hey everyone, welcome back. It's another episode of Wrapped. Wrapped Up. If you don't... Wrapped Up. What the **** is going on in here on this day? I filmed a lot today and it's so hot and I'm feeling a little bit like stir crazy. So apologies if I'm not quite like far in all cylinders. If you don't know, Wrapped Up is a series on my channel where I wrapped up some of my books and we unwrap them and we read them in a reading vlog. I wrapped these books up last Christmas and it's through us unwrapping them and whatever it's dwindled down to not many. This was originally like my whole TBR and now it's like a seventh of my TBR. But we're gonna like try and keep going with this selection until Christmas, like until actually December this year and then we'll rethink and we'll re-innovate basically. So Wrapped Up and Rebirth. I have been letting myself unwrap two and choose between them because I am kind to myself and I love myself. I don't know if we're gonna do that today. Also like these, these are falling apart. I mean look at this. Like they're just, they've just been ruined for me dropping them on the floor a lot. I'll unwrap one and then if I'm like not like overjoyed we'll unwrap another one. Let's unwrap this one. I've just grabbed it because it was near the top. Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay so this is Educated by Tara Estova which if you watched a video I did a while back of the oldest books on my TBR, this is on there. This is one of the oldest books on my TBR. It is a memoir of this woman who like grew up. Her family were paying for the end of days so she never went to school, she didn't learn, she was uneducated and when she's an adult she educates herself. Now I don't know if I'm in the mood for this, gonna be honest, gonna be honest. I think I want something a bit more like light. Not light necessarily but like this is quite heavy ---- and I'm not sure if I'm like in the mood. It's gonna be hot in the next couple of days, I think I want something a bit lighter. Now granted we probably won't find that but I'm gonna unwrap another one. I don't know if I'm choosing right, should I unwrap a different one? No, okay, we're gonna unwrap this. I always try and look at the thing so I don't. We're reading this, ladies and gentlemen, we're reading this. That's what we've been waiting for! It's what we wanted all along! Oh my god, I have been waiting. I have been waiting to read this book. I've been waiting the whole time and wrapped up to read this book. So this is When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole. It is a thriller inspired by gentrification of New York basically and like basically all the black neighbors are selling their houses and the girl's like there's some whack ---- going on. That's all I really know, I've heard really great reviews. I have been so excited to read this ever since I bought it and I just haven't like found a chance. So this is exactly what I need. I actually need a thriller I can fly through. I'm so excited. You guys, this is almost like a five-star prediction. That's how excited I am to read it. It's almost up there as a five-star prediction. Okay, so I am a hundred-ish pages into When No One Is Watching and you guys, I'm really enjoying it. Pretty legendary if you ask me. I love it. I'm really enjoying it. This is such a good thriller. So basically we're following two perspectives. We're following Sydney who's a black woman who has grown up in this Brooklyn neighborhood and we're following Theo. He's the star of the show but like Theo, we do follow his perspective as well and he has just, he's a white man who's just moved to the neighborhood with his, well he moved with his girlfriend but they've kind of since split up and they're tied up in this house they've bought together in the neighborhood and black people who are like mainstays in the neighborhood are moving out. They're leaving, like mattresses turn up on the curb one day, moving van the next and there's all these companies trying to get, you know, Sydney and the other black people still left in the area to sell their homes. I think it's like basically going to be like gentrification turned murder. It's going to be an analogy for how gentrification is murder. It is paced so well. It's starting to get creepy and it's built so well over the first 100 pages. We start off with this kind of mundane, almost blinkered attitude to what's going on because Sydney is suffering with quite severe depression so she's very like insular and we're starting to so slowly open our eyes to what is going on. We've had a few things like a black man attacked Theo. He wasn't fully aware of what was going on. Basically he was very confused, the man that attacked him, and Sydney was trapped in a car by this Uber driver and he was like lecturing her about like resisting the change because basically another thing that's happening is this big pharmaceutical company of some sort is moving into the old hospital there and that's a big reason as to why so many people are moving to the area, so many white people are moving to the area. But I really like Alyssa Cole's writing. Listen, I don't read romance but like this has me tempted to pick up one of her romance books. I never read romance but like hasn't she written some historical romance? Oh yeah, maybe I should give it a go. Yeah, maybe I'll just like not vlog it but like I feel like that's the kind of thing I'd like to read on like the Kindle app. Maybe I don't have a Kindle. Play the violin. I'm really just loving the writing so it makes me want to check out more of Alyssa Cole's stuff. Oh and also there is this app called R Hood where like they can all, all the neighbours can chat to each other and like these white people be so racist. So the white people in this, apart from Theo, Theo's like kind of pitched as like this clueless white dude who just has good intentions whatever. I don't know if we can fully trust him yet but all the other white people are like get out of here. I'm really enjoying it. I'm having a lot of fun reading it. I think it's a great thriller so far. I'm really intrigued to see how it's gonna build. I thought quickly whilst we were here we can unbox my Fairyloot box that has arrived. Let me turn it the right way up. You guys know I love Fairyloot. They very kindly send me these boxes but I love them so much. I love Fairyloot. This is the June box. I get so excited when I open it. Okay so oh yeah I remember this and I couldn't figure out what book this was gonna be. So the theme is animal companions. First we've got something for our Sarah J Maas stands in the house. We have got a Crescent City ceramic pot. That's cute isn't it? Oh I love the gold on it. That is cute. Oh I just love how it arrives. I love how it's all like packaged up. Oh my god it's a metal bookmark. I love it. I love it and it gives me that buzz. It feeds exactly what I want to do. No I love their metal bookmarks are one of my favourite things that they do. I've had two already. I lost one under the sofa like yesterday. I need to go find it. Oh do you see why I love these? Oh my god. I think it's inspired by Power of the Orange Tree which I really want to read. It is and it's got like this stencil design of this fire dragon on it. Oh my god I'm a fan. I love it. I love their metal bookmarks. I love metal bookmarks. If I look at the tassel as well I love a good tassel. There's nothing more joyous than seeing a tassel sticking out of your book. It's very strange. Oh a Crinic Stand E, Kingdom of the Wicked. You can like have my guy on your desk or like on your bookshelf. This is gonna be the pin. Oh I got the pin of the month. It's a cat. I love cats. Hang on. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my oh my oh my oh my god. It's an enamel pin of the cat from Kiki's Delivery Service. GG. Oh my god. Isn't that so cute? I love her and then oh my goodness we've got some pillow cases. Can you see? I'm in shock. I feel like Fairy Loop genuinely the best out there in terms of quality of their items and quantity. Like you always get a lot of items and they're amazing quality. Oh the Raven Cycle. We've got one that says the heart is all fire and then we have got one that says the head is too wise. Aren't they so cute? This is what I mean. Great quality and you get so many items. I genuinely have no idea what this month's book is. Fire with Fire by Destiny Cerulean. Oh my god. What is this? I think this is like a sister book. Sister Fantasy. Oh we've got. I love it when they do this. A gorgeous stencil on the hardcover on the sleeve as well. There's always some gorgeous art as well. So that was the Fairy Loop box for this month. I'm gonna look into this book and see like more about the plot. I'll leave their website link down below. They are just like the coolest. I love all their stuff. As you can see it's absolutely like an amazing selection of stuff. So I recommend you go check it out. I am gonna go continue reading when no one is watching and I'll update you in a bit. So I'm gonna be completely honest. I read up to this point last night. I read loads last night and now this morning I'm like thoughts about this book? I had them? I don't remember. I don't remember love. I don't remember at all. I really don't. It was an awful long time ago. Not in a bad way. It's just you guys it's so hot today and it was hotter yesterday but it didn't affect me. Like I didn't feel the heat but today I filmed a video and I tell you I'm just exhausted. Like I feel like all of the life has been sapped out of me. But I am still really enjoying When No One Is Watching. I'm loving it in fact. Like I'm having so much fun. It's just getting slowly more and more sinister. The way that people are like disappearing, like people in this book are disappearing is so like quiet and you don't necessarily realise for a long time that they're gone and that's scarier to me than like it being a big hoo-ha every time someone goes. Like it's scarier and more insidious for it to be completely hidden. You know to be completely masked. Kim? Her name's Kim right? Theo's girlfriend, ex-girlfriend. In my theory, my current theory, she's an evil mastermind behind it all. She can- I hate her. She makes my blood boil. I just- I hate Kim. What a horrible woman. What a horrible person. Horrible person. Horrible. Horrible person. It has a good contrast between two types of scenes. So basically Sydney is doing this like tour of the neighbourhood with the black history behind it and so there's like a scene usually where her and Theo go and interview people from around the neighbourhood and they kind of give their experiences of black history and life they've lived and their thoughts on like the history that came before them. And then there's a scene where it's like insidious horror film and we're kind of flipping back and forth between them and I think it is gives the book a good level of like I don't want to say education but like showing the issue of the erasing of black history these neighbourhoods and then the kind of like thriller version of it if that makes sense like the allegory version of it and they're kind of like playing off one another which I think is working really well but I'm really enjoying it. I'm really really loving it and I'm really intrigued to see where it's gonna go. I think I'm just gonna finish it tonight. I'm just gonna like oh my god ah it's gonna get it's gonna get so bad it's gonna get so bad and I might cry. I finished when I was watching and the fault with this is that the ending is the strongest part but it happens too rushed. But I am tapped out done goodbye. Basically it just goes ******* crazy in the last 60 pages 70 pages and it's been so slow up to that point so drawn out like not much happening only a few very sporadic tension building moments that when it goes like full toward the end it's just a complete shift of pace that I don't think really worked. You know I love like so many aspects of this book how it looks at gentrification and the effects of it I think it's a great example and like putting that into a thriller context but it just wasn't paced well towards the end like it just like shifted off the handle and I was like I would have liked maybe a bit more of it throughout rather than it just being at the end. Also I'm gonna have to cut some of this video out I've already edited up until this point I'm gonna have to cut it out because I predicted this from the 100 page mark. I was like in the clip I can't show it to you because I like spoil the whole book but I'm like this is what's happening this is what's happening and I usually I say that ---- because I'm never right I'm never right when it comes to thrillers I don't know my ---- I never predict anything but I tell you the whole plot like I tell you the ending I'm like Scooby and Shaggy I'm solving a mystery when I'm 100 pages in and in it I say like I'm not gonna cut this out I'm you know it's not a spoiler because I haven't read it like girl that's the whole plot so yeah I feel like it's a bit predictable now I feel like in some ways it's meant to be predictable like you're supposed to know what's going on for me it was the only possibility as to what could be going on but I feel like to get it dead on like to every detail what is happening at the like 90 100 page mark isn't that great for a thriller like I feel like there should be a few more twists and turns so I read I went and I read like a few um reviews like to see what other people thought because I was like is it just me but I read Cindy's review and um Cindy mentioned how like the baddies in this are like almost caricature like yes there are people in in life who are this racist and like who are this on the nose but I feel like I agree with Cindy in that perhaps some of it should have been a bit more insidious because they're literally like evil movie villains especially towards the end when it kind of goes a bit crazy so I just felt it I just thought it kind of went into the kind of like ridiculous a bit at the end um when it had been so like slow and eerie and building like this tension and then I feel like that kind of went out the window at the end so I've been struggling to pick a rating I think I'm going to give it 3.5 and I think I am going to round up to a 4 on goodreads I still want to read some of Alyssa Cole's other writing though because I really like the kind of like contemporary elements of this so I still want to give some of Alyssa Cole's writing a go I would love to read more thrillers from Alyssa Cole because I loved a lot of the atmosphere of this and a lot of the kind of ideas behind it but the ending was just like but yeah I hope you enjoyed this video I'm very glad I finally read this book because it's been one I have wanted to read for so so long let me know if you have read any of Alyssa Cole's like romances and what you thought of them and if you've gotten to the end of this video comment a door emoji if you've gotten to the end and yeah I'll see you very soon in another video