 Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. I hope you're well. Welcome back to the last December episode of Wrapped Up. Well, what you want to do is not necessarily what you're gonna do. I'll try and remember to make a playlist. You can go back and watch all the episodes of this so far, but basically I wrapped up a lot of my physical TBR, most of my physical TBR, and we are unwrapping one and then doing a reading vlog for it. So I've got my Christmas jumper on today because it is actually Christmas Day. It's the afternoon slash evening. We just had a Christmas lunch and I'm actually so tired. I'm so tired. I think you can tell by my face that I'm extremely tired today. But I'm gonna unwrap the last episode for December. I have decided I'm gonna continue this on. I want a really good book because obviously I'm just me chilling out like today and tomorrow with my family. I can get quite a bit of reading done. I'm kind of in the mood for a fantasy, I guess. I don't know. I think I'm in the mood for anything. I'm actually... Oh no! Whoa! She fell. She fell hard, bitch. Okay, we're just gonna ignore the mess around me. I feel like going for one of these two. I don't know why. Let's go for this one. Let's have a look. Oh, okay. I'm actually in the mood for this. Wait. Okay, so I got the Court of Miracles by Kester Grant, which is like a YA fantasy inspired by Les Mis. Now, the reason that I'm laughing is because book one in this, The Midnight Library, was sent to be my molly from my molly. But two, Burn Our Boys Down, was sent to me by molly. Book four is sent to me by molly. Is it a co-incident? Is it a co-incident? I ask you. Is it a co-incident? I don't understand why I'm only unwrapping the books that molly has sent to me. What? This is quite exciting actually. I think this is quite a nice thing to read over Christmas. Honey, you've got a big storm coming. I believe it's about Epanene, who is my favourite character from Les Mis. I do like Les Mis. It's got a lovely cloth bound underneath the just jacket. I feel like this is the perfect thing for Christmas. So I'm actually very, very happy. A few moments later, I'm only like 20 pages in and I'm not sure if I like it. 100 pages into a Court of Miracles. Is it a Court of Miracles? The Court of Miracles. I don't know if I can say this. This isn't like mean, but like it reminds me of the Kendall and Kylie Jenner book. Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave? I don't like it so far. The only way I can describe it is it very simple, but things like that happens in books I don't like and where I think the writing is bad. Like it being very nonsensical. Lots of little things happening that don't seem to lead to each other neatly. Like it's such a fast plot that it kind of becomes redundant because you'll never spend any time in anything for it to make any sense. Magic systems and political systems that are just very convenient. Like I feel like a political and magical system should be easy to boil down, whereas there's so many different elements and aspects and parts to this that I feel like whenever the author comes into a problem that they need for the plot they just invent something new rather than molding it. Does that make sense when it's just like for every problem there's a new part of the magic system or a new part of the political system? It's not for main part. That all needs to be simplified because it's far too complicated. I really don't like it. If I wasn't doing one vlog for this I would probably just DNF it right now. Like it feels like a one or two start and I feel bad because Molly got this to me but I don't like it. The writing really reminds me of like Kendall and Kylie Jenner book Rebel City Avenger. It's like it's the same. I'm not good. I don't want to say any mean stuff. I don't want to be mean but like are we sure the author isn't the same? I've got a live show now. I'm doing some live reading sprints with some friends in like an hour. I need to go have dinner and then get ready for the live and hopefully I will be able to read a good chunk of this. Let's hope it gets better. Listen we've got 300 pages for it to get better. It's the Les Mis one. The Les Mis and the Jungle Book retelling. Apparently it's Les Mis and the Jungle Book. That's such a random combination. It is and I don't vibe with it. Amy you have to convince Megan to DNF because she was like no I can't. Yeah. She's like I can't right now. DNF. DNF. DNF. Talk yourself DNFing it. That's what Molly said and then Kim can be a fruit book. Yeah. It's the rap pop one so then I have to. Rap a little one. Yeah. Rap for a little baby one. Rap for a really silly one. Do it right now. Everyone here gets a sneak peek to the vlog. Oh okay shall we? Do you have any thin ones? Oh what if I get a classic or something and I have to read it in two? Why do you have to read it in two? There's unwrapping up. Yeah hang on. Okay. Get that fire rixi door. I'm off. Peace. The one that's bigger. Yeah. This. Wait the one that's bigger. Wait turn it so that I can see how thick they are. Yeah. They're like the same pretty much. The one in the right looks. The one in the right looks slightly thinner. The one in your right hand. The one on your left. I vote the one that you can see the whole stag on. Is it a stag? Happy today. Yeah. This is for all of us. So as you may have seen in the last clip on my live show last night everyone pressured me to DNF the court of miracles and I think it was the right decision. I don't vibe with it. I don't get it. It really in my opinion is not very well written at all. Did I read? Absolutely. Did I talk? Absolutely. So what I then unwrapped and what I'm going to be reading in the rest of this video is My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing. So this is a thriller about basically a couple who killed together. By the way I am 114 pages in. They kind of like scout the girls that they're going to kill and it's narrated from the husband's point of view. It's kind of to spice up their marriage. Spice up. I think spice up their sex life. I mean that's never been explicitly stated. He is now starting to say like how sexy he finds it when she like kills someone. It's getting weird. It's never like oh we over her corpse. I might need to bleep that. But it's never like that so far. It's like something I do in the heat of the moment and it's more the planning I think and like the anticipation and the memory that they like. Anyway the wife has framed the last murder in a way that frames an old serial killer from the area. So they're trying to set up that that serial killer is back so people won't suspect them. I'm enjoying it. I think it's like really well paced. It's such a quick read like I just fly through it. But it's kind of got me thinking that maybe this kind of domestic thriller isn't for me. This is not for me. No. I don't know. I mean I like murder mystery thrillers. I like action thrillers and I don't know what you categorize thrillers like the turn of the key lock every door home before dark. They're not like domestic thrillers in the sense of like husbands and wives and marriages. I don't know if that's for me. I enjoy this. I like it. Like it's fine. It's a fun read but it's not going to be a favorite. I don't think because it's like about a marriage and like for some reason I don't care because it's reminding me of the silent patient a bit. I mean I think it's better than the silent patient. It's much more interesting but it's reminding me of that. And also I don't think I like male narrators. I just like women. I just wish this book was from the wife's point of view. I think it would be so much more interesting. Something about male narrators and thrillers just rubs me up the wrong way and I'm like get your male ass out of here. I don't have time for you. Like I don't I don't want this. It's not a problem I have in fantasy or contemporary. It's not a problem I have in other genres but it's a problem I have with thrillers. I don't like men and I don't like men. But I like the book. I'm enjoying it. It's fun. It's fast-paced. I'm gonna go read to page 200 of this and then I will check in with you about what my thoughts are. Here's the thing. I don't feel very well. I feel just overtired. You know when you're like jet lagged or really tired and you feel sick? Like you feel nauseous? That's what I'm feeling like right now. I just feel like sick. And so I don't know if it's because of that but I'm not like I don't dislike this. I like it. At the moment it's like a 3 a 3.5 but I don't have any like legit feelings about it. You know like I don't feel any kind of way about it. Feel a bit down actually. I'm not ready to be still annoying me. He does like toxic men's shit but he's also like he's just a bit pathetic. Like he's just a bit pathetic. Like if you're gonna go for this and like kill women like let's let's go for it. You know like it's not quite there. Because we haven't like read about the murders so like I don't have the spice of the murders. Where's the flavour? Where's the flavour in it? And like I said I don't know if it's because I'm just not feeling well. Like I just I just kind of want to play Sims. Like I kind of don't want to be doing this. So I don't know where this is gonna go. I feel like the wife is a bit sus. Well of course she's sus. She's killing people. It's not bad like I would read more by Samantha Downing. I would prefer to read more by Samantha Downing if the narrator was a female. Like I hope no one gets angry at me for this. I don't it's just like a pattern I've noticed. But just something about like domestic thrillers from men's perspective. I just find them so annoying and like wet wipes but like toxic at the same time. Like I just don't doesn't pass the vibe check in my opinion. Me to every man in domestic thrillers. It's pathetic. You are pathetic. So anyway I'm gonna go finish it. I'm hopefully gonna feel a bit less sick. I think I'm gonna have like a peppermint tea or something. I thought that was a smudge on my camera. The whole time I was filming I was like yeah that's fine. It's it's fluff from my sock. Oh my goodness I'm so embarrassed. So embarrassed they love you. Just two days ago now I'm gonna get this like a 3.5 star. I enjoyed it. I think it's like a fun quick like gruesome thriller but I still wanted more. And the ending I mean this whole thing is like unrealistic. But to me the ending I just feel like not everything was addressed. It was like very wrapped up easy. I don't understand how certain things weren't addressed and certain repercussions didn't happen. Like I just don't get it. Like it's just not it's not realistic. It's not realistic. It's not realistic. It's just not realistic. And I called a lot of it like I called what was happening. Like I called like the underlying plot twist. I wasn't surprised by the plot twist. I was just like well we all knew that surely. I would still recommend it as like a fun thriller. There's nothing wrong with it. I would definitely read more stuff from Samantha Downing and like try it out. But it's by no means like a favorite. I have problems with it. I think it was predictable. But I like how like nasty it was. But I still think actually it had more scope to be nastier, to be grittier, to be like more dirty. Like I wanted a bit more like it was fine. It was fine. It was better than a court of miracle. So that is the last of December's wrapped up. Although this is coming out the start of January because I just got too burnt out. I've had a look at my video schedule and I've decided this is going to be like January's episode and we will pick this back up in February. I've got a lot of really fun videos planned in January so I just haven't got time to do this again this month. But I will be doing it next month. I hope you've enjoyed Wrapped Up. It's definitely going to keep going because a lot of you enjoy it and I'm really excited actually. I'm not going to wrap up any more books, like any new books I've received. So it's really going to be me trying to get through the books that have been on my TBR for quite a long time. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you're doing good. I hope the new year is treating you well and I will see you very, very soon in another video. Okay, bye.