 Welcome back to another video. Today we're doing the next episode of Wrapped Up. So many of you will know Wrapped Up is 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 a premise. Now I do let myself nowadays unwrap two if I want. If I unwrap 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, no one wants to send their presents. 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 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 fill like this paper bag. Looks like a good length. What do we think? Oh my god. Let's just unwrap it. Let's just unwrap it. Okay this is fun. This is Theatre of Marbles by it says Leanne Dillsworth on here. This is an arc I got sent. I believe the finished version it might be LM Dillsworth. 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 theatre essentially. She finds out I think it's set in like Victorian London which I love. I've been craving something actually. I was watching, okay you're gonna clown me for this. You guys go drag me for this, huh? Okay. I like watching Map Men or J4 Men. Not Map Men, he's J4 Men. That's his YouTube channel. I love watching him for years and he does. So he's doing a series in the moment of Bridges in London. And I want 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 a set a bit after that. But I'm interested in London as a location at the moment. Anyway she finds out that women like connected to the circus keep disappearing essentially. 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 actually filmed with a ring light. I haven't even got the ring light out for this clip because I'm, I'm, it were 100 pages in and the car got passed. I'm beyond caring. I'm being, this vlog is about to be a mess. I'm sorry in advance. I'm not enjoying this at all. Oh no. This has now gone downhill. And part of me is 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 going to stick it out and we're going to read the whole thing. Okay. I'm cutting my head off. Let's like scooch that up a bit. Okay. 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 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. I said what I do yada yada. She keeps saying to him, I was born free. I was born free. And whenever there's like 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 Viscount or maybe I'm just thinking that because his name is Vincent. Anyway, it's rich, dude. And so she's like, that ain't my life. So I already know this book is going to deal a lot with like, you know, racial identity, particularly in this time 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 this. There's something I read lately. Like daggers. How dare you drive your car in a street. Something I read lately that I didn't like that was voicey, because it was voicey. But I can't remember what, like, we are really in this protagonist's head as my mic on. Yeah, really 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 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, thinking in a way with no nuanced thought, like a human being word. I don't think I really like dumb, calling her dumb. I don't want to correlate mixed feelings with being, you know, part of a black diaspora and the situations around her, her black head into 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 already not enjoying it. So yeah, that's a great, great update. I'm just gonna try to 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 all my new thoughts. 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. And I'm thinking to myself, like, I don't want to rag on this book. I don't want to shit 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 shit on it. But I don't enjoy it. So like, do we take out my beer and lie? 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 say? It reminds me a lot of a book I read called, I can't even read it, I DNF'd it like 50 pages in The Court of Miracles by Kester Grant, where the writing just reads so dumb down, like so dumb down. Here's the thing, right? In the back, it's compared to fans, to authors, sorry, Jesse Burton, Bridget Collins, Stacey 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 YA, but with speaking of like, essay and, you know, adult matters happening in this book. I'm going to look on Waterstones and see what it 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 YA book. Let's look at Shadow and Bone. Yeah, it would show us like, children's teen and YA. If it was YA, this is adult. Is it? What? I don't understand what's going on. I truly do not understand what is going on. I just, it was pitched as well as a woman goes missing in London and our protagonist wants to get to the bottom of it. But she hasn't, right? She meets, she rags 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 would be more, I thought a woman was killed. And I thought it was like, solving murders of girls in these positions, like positions of poverty or lack of social standing who are kind of getting killed. Like when Jack the Ripper's victims were killed, everyone was just like, oh, they're prostitutes, you know, when they won. Read the Five by Halle Reubenhold, check the facts, receipts, America. Yeah, I thought it was going to be about that, but it's not. Like, she's just like, there's some shady shit going on and she's going to uncover it. But like, it's not that deeper mystery because she's like, I just want to know where this girlie is. I don't know where 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, you know, her examination of 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 she was born free and how she thought that made herself better than 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 they come into it. Like, she's got a thing with, this is why I count who I mentioned and you know how that's going to turn out. She meets this other man and you know how that's going to turn out. Like it's all just so predictable for me. She, this is my number one thing. One of one thing that I hate about books, she trusts characters that she barely knows to help her 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 plot line 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 what it is. 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 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 shitting on this book like I said for the reasons I said. 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 I really don't like it. This is where my blood starts to boil. Because at the moment it's like a two. It won't get a one because it's not offensive. I only really give ones to books that are like offensive to me or like, I feel no qualms about giving a 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 sitch? You know what I mean? So anyway, I'm going to go finish this tonight. Hopefully I want to 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, if 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, 4096 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 literally started filming, just like set my ring light up my next one. So I'm 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 Theatre of Marvels right at the last minute. But 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. The clue's in her name again. Theatre. Dumb dumb. I think I was thinking of Circus of Wonders, Theatre of Marvel, Circus of Wonders 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 is off topic but King Henry VIII had like a trumpet here who was quite prominent, he was Black. So it's a topic I find really interesting but I just could not get over the writing. I just didn't like the writing and it's had good reviews but me and it weren't rubbing 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 at that. I was doing my makeup, listening to audiobook and I went like what the fuck but then it tries to be like I'm not like other insta loves. I'm different and not like other insta loves. 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 rioting itself didn't vibe with me. We clashed girly. We clashed. We weren't vezdy 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 like survive the night we had as a wrapped up book and I feel like I could really rip into that because Ronny Sagan'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 of 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 ya 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!