 I predicted this from the 100 page mark. Thoughts about this book? I had them? Welcome back. It's another episode of Wrapped Up. Wrapped Up. Wrapped Up. What the fuck 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 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. Wrapped Up will be really bad. I have been letting myself unwrap too 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 are cut 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 Restover which if you watched a video I did a while back of the oldest books on my TBR, this was 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 then when she's an adult she educates herself. Now I don't know if I'm in a 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 shit and I'm not sure if I'm like in the mood. It's gonna be hot 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 Violetta 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 girls like there's some wack shit going on. That's what 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 just 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. Good 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 is a black woman who has grown up in this Brooklyn neighborhood and we're following Theo. He's kind of like the sub character. Sydney's the star of the show but 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 down 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 and 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 thoughts going on because Sydney is is suffering with quite a 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 that 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 move into 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 our hood where like they can all all the neighbors 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 fairy loot box that has arrived. Let me turn it the right way up. You guys know I love fairy loot. They very kindly send me these boxes but I love them so much. I love fairy loot. This is the June box. I get so excited to 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 favorite things that they do. I've had till 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 it's I think it's inspired by a pair 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 love it. I love their metal bookmarks. I love metal bookmarks. I 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 clinic standee kingdom of the wicked. You can like have my guy on your desk or like on your bookshelf. It's gonna be the pin. Oh we've 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. GGG. Oh my god. Look 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 fairly genuinely the best out there in terms of quality of their items and quantity. Like you always get a lot of items and their amazing quality. Oh the raven cycle for 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. Oh my god. What is this. I think this is like a sister book. Sister fantasy. Oh we've got. I love what 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 loot box for this month. I'm gonna look into this book and see like more about the plot. I'll leave their website linked 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. 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 love. I don't remember at all. I really don't. Was that not for a 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 zapped 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 don't want to rip her hair off. 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 building the tension. And we're kind of flipping back and forth between them. And I think it 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 in these neighbourhoods and then the kind of like thriller version of it, if that makes sense, like the allegory version of it. And they come up 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 fucking crazy in the last like 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 ball to ball at 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 hand when 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 share it to you because I like spoiled the whole book, but I'm like, this is what's happening. This is what's happening. And I usually say that shit because I'm never right. I'm never right when it comes to thrillers. I don't know my shit. 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 went and I read like a few reviews like to see what other people thought because I was like, is it just me? But I read Cindy's review and Cindy mentioned how like the baddies in this are like almost caricature. Like yes, there are people in life who are this racist and like who are this on the nose. But I feel like I agree with Cindy and 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 felt it kind of went into the kind of like ridiculous a bit at the end when it had been so like slow and eerie and building like this tension. And then I felt 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 it up to a 4 on Goodreads. I still want to read some of Alyssa Cole's other writing though because I really liked the kind of like contemporary elements of this. So I still want to give some of Alyssa Cole's writing ago. 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. Bye!