 whoa okay oh no i'm so sorry it's okay just relax just relax okay so hi everyone this stack does not want to stay up but anyway welcome back to that episode of wrapped up which many of you will know it's a series that i started at christmas well it's been going for two years but i started this edition at christmas and i'm kind of continuing it in the new year these are all 2021 releases that i own but did not read and every episode of these we unwrap one and read it so i'm very excited i'm having good vibes at the moment guys it's currently the 5th of february it's a saturday i'm having the weekend off like well this is still semi work but not really but i'm having the weekend off like fully off for like the first time and i don't know when i feel like i'm doing a really good job of like working this week and then having a break which is something i don't usually do so i'm in a really good mood and i'm reading again i have read two books in february already which is pretty good considering i only read five in january and i just don't want anything to slow that down no that does roar up so yeah i want to be careful with what i pick i don't want too long a book but like a thriller would be nice something that's fast paced it's fun to read that's easy to read would be kind of what i would pick right now but whether we're gonna get that is something different to be honest i've kind of forgotten what books are here so i mean it's a risk but i don't want to pick like a short book to be honest i don't know why but this is jumping out at me um i don't know what it is i promise you yeah this one on top just kind of jumped out on me i don't know what it is may it's probably just because it's on top this one or this one what we're gonna go with because they're both like semi-short hardbacks okay no we're gonna go for this one oh no oh it's been the worst week of my life actually let's all take a moment shall we i've asked for this i asked for a thriller uh this is survive the night by riley sega which has been panned everyone's been hating this book everyone who's read it has hated it my patrons told me they like threw their books at the wall in outrage reading it and this is what we're gonna read in this vlog okay this will be fun because i feel like this is the kind of book that if i'm gonna read it it deserves to be its own vlog some books can't carry being a one-book vlog this book can oh my god this is so like panned everyone has hated it you guys all i know is that there's like this serial killer going around i think it's set in the 80s and our main character gets in this car with a guy who's giving her a lift and she thinks that he's the serial killer and she's like trapped in the car with him all night to be honest to me it sounds kind of like riley sega trying to have a go at no exit like oh maybe i could do that but me and riley sega have had an okay relationship i think i gave both look every door and home before dark four stars and i gave the last time i lied like 4.55 something around that so like i've never hated a riley sega but maybe this is the time but actually i feel like you know it will be a fast paced thriller i feel like at the very least i won't spend ages reading it so i feel okay about this but i did tell a bit of a lie there but i don't because everyone has hated it i don't think i've really heard anyone have a good word to say about it so um let's just go give it a read okay so i'm 100 pages and survive the night i read 100 pages last night in bed and like here's a thing i don't hate it yet it won't be a flop i'm confident no the truth is i feel like this is going to be different than some books right so like the appeal by janice hallett i read recently was up i think i was the last yeah there was a last wrapped up vlog i did and i enjoyed the book it was fine i gave it a 3.5 star you know not amazing but it was an enjoyable read right i just had some issues with it but i had such high hopes of that book that it was disappointing this book i'm going into expecting a one or two star if i'm honest and it's not that at the moment so i feel like my demeanor is going to be like i'm loving it but i've just like i haven't read a book recently where i've got into it with such low expectations but here we are but i'm not hating it to me at the moment like it's it's okay it's quite good we're following charlie this is set in like 1980s by the way and her roommate was recently murdered by the campus killer and she blames herself a lot for that and she's kind of fleeing university and she gets this she agrees to have this like share a ride with this guy who's kind of going a similar way to her but he's a stranger and during the car ride she starts to think he's the campus killer because of stuff he's saying i don't know if it's a spoiler i won't say what he's saying but he said certain things and makes a thing oh shit i'm sharing a car with the man who killed my friend the whole book pretty much beyond page 30 they're in the car and part of me was like how is how is variety sega gonna sustain this tension or just like this location of the car for the whole book you know how is it not gonna get boring and we've got a lot of flashbacks that's how he's kind of doing it we're flashing back a lot in time to learn more about the murder how it happened why charlie blames herself etc etc and i feel like that's been done okay well i don't know it just feels very like a ripoff of no exit for me and i don't like that it feels like variety sega's trying to do no exit i feel like we're gonna be out of the car soon it's gonna be a cat and mouse chase um just um it took me a while to realize that that you wanted to be me especially because i read hairpin bridge by tell adams last year which is like based around cars again a lot of it is set in cars and i just like boring boring boring so yeah i don't know i'm enjoying it i'm reading it really fast and i'm not really putting it down so that's a plus for it like it's a good thriller for me so far like i'm reading it really really fast and i'm not like having to set time or anything i'm just like flying through it it's an easy read one thing i will say that has annoyed me from the get go is that charlie has this thing where when she goes through periods it's like it's literally described as this when she goes through moments of extreme emotion like fear guilt sadness whatever she starts imagining everything around her as a movie right she's obsessed with movies and she starts to see everything around her as a movie so like she can't be sure what's real and what's not she can hallucinate people things happening as a kind of scene around her transforms although it may share some kind of similarity to what is happening like around her basically let me just say we all fucking know it made me roll my eyes we all know at the climax of this when she's going to be running away from him because we all know it's going to be happening like i knew that when i heard the synopsis of the book you know it's going to be happening she's going to be imagining everything as a movie and she's not going to know what's real and what's not i asked my prediction i'm laying it down now because yeah it's like what's real what's not how do i escape this when i don't know what's real and what's not like that's going to be the situation and i think that's cheap and i don't feel like it's been like tucked into the story very well at all it's obviously just a plot device like a device to like make the book what he wants i don't feel like it's been blended in well at all but i mean like it's an interesting dynamic between them in the car charlie's a fine character it just feels fine to me at the moment it feels enjoyable it's probably like a 3.5 for me right now you know it's nothing special but it's fine but like that may go downhill because a lot of you said the ending is very bad so i don't know but like i'm reading it quickly which is you know a big plus so today is sunday i don't have too much to do today i need to do a few bits i'm just gonna check out and read this so hopefully today i will be able to check in with you at like the 200 page mark okay okay okay okay okay so really really sorry niki i'm really really really sorry i didn't realize that it was why are you laughing i'm 200 pages into survive the night now it's compulsively readable i can't put it down i'm not having to force myself through the book at least it's not boring right at least it's not boring like i can't stop reading it so that's that's a pro right but let's talk about the cons firstly charlie is a fucking idiot idiot making idiotic choices with idiotic justifications me every time charlie makes a decision i don't buy your justification for why like why she's making that decision and why it's gonna put us on the on the course of the rest of the book like i'm i'm not in this like i you have not convinced me that she would actually think that idiotic idiot it's actually infuriating i'm sorry but it's actually infuriating now here's the thing i know i'm about to get angry i'm like certain that certain things are about to happen in the last 100 pages book that's gonna make me fuming i am fucking fuming mega mega fucking fuming a at how idiotic is probably gonna be be at how like stupid like stupidly written it's gonna be i'm torn because i know it's gonna be it's gonna be it's gonna be infuriating but i i'm not having the worst time reading it i'm enjoying reading it like i'm reading it so fast like i'm flying through it it's so readable but am i gonna think it's good no and it is by far already my least favorite of all the riley sega's that i've read it's probably like i don't know it depends how offensive the ending is because like no one to tell it's gonna make me angry the route we're going down of like the type of girl our main character is like i i just i just already know i'm gonna be angry it does feel like riley sega saw the success of no exit in this like cat and mouse game you know like you know stuck for the night you know counting down the hours of the night trying to find help like it does make me think he saw that and said i want to slice that pie but the ingredients are off riley the milk is curdled i don't even know what goes in pie pie is not very english thing but yeah it's like annoying and it's gonna get even more annoying like i know i'm gonna be like screaming and frustration at the end so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna light a candle to try and relax i'm gonna i'm gonna turn the lights off just leave my fairy lights on turn the other lamps off i have in the room get in the dark and i'll talk to you in the morning about the experience i'm gonna have during these twilight hours reading the final page of this book will i survive the night who knows who knows ha ha laugh funny that's funny to me it's funny yeah do you have a sense of humor i feel like i said nothing of note there i feel like i just chat shit throughout the whole of that clip okay so i finished survive the night last night like i predicted i could not put it down so let's let's discuss so something i do is often if i finish a book at night or when i can't film i just write some quick thoughts in my notes app to like describe how i'm feeling and my initial thoughts right so i can like recapture that when i come to film so that's let's just let's read what i've written together and then we'll take it from there okay we'll we'll go through the whole list then we'll discuss each of these items individually so low expectations kind of better but not right man writing woman Riley that's not your name sis and it's purposeful and you're profiting off of it we do not and i mean do not do what happens at the end we don't do that we don't do that in this house it's not acceptable we i mean we don't do that we don't do that then the final two edge lord extravaganza j christof who so much to discuss i had such low expectations going into this book right the bar was so low the bar could not be lower and it was like kind of better because i had an okay reading experience but objectively this book is awful like i don't know how to explain this to you like i could not put this book down you could not pry it out of my hands i had to finish it to be fair i think i was like skim reading some elements of the writing because the writing was questionable in itself which is our last point but like the the twists in this book are awful the big end twist the end end and twist of who is the real villain behind everything right i saw it coming like 60 70 pages before that and i never we know small brain energy i never ever predict anything like i never get thrillers correct you're gonna play a game girl play it right it was the most obvious thing i have ever seen happen in my life it was it wasn't even attempted to be like concealed well like what the fuck like it was so bad i i can't explain to you when i read thrillers all mysteries i let myself be taken along for the ride i don't spend a moment theorizing a moment a millisecond and i still managed to know what was going on so that's bad the next two points are kind of intertwined man writing woman it was obvious our protagonist was ridden by a man ridden by a man okay it's obvious it's she's like she's like oh the way she thinks is like how a man thinks that like a vulnerable like woman acts who's trying to counteract it like and then let's talk about how ridey sega is not his name ridey sega is a pseudonym right ridey sega is a pen name i think we should have that conversation and it's it's purposefully gender neutral if not leaning more towards a woman like i think when people hear the name riley they do think like a woman that's purposeful because he's trying to appear appeal to female thriller readers because he only writes female main characters and like they all they they're it's just there's something a little bit insidious about it i've touched it before like there's something necessarily like wrong with men writing women but when it's like he's purposely trying to make people think that he's a woman writing this like that that's it's purposeful you know and it's probably getting him the success that he's getting him in some kind of subconscious way and i just don't know if i'm okay with it after what has been written in this book the reason people are so angry about this book i'm not gonna tell you exactly what happens but like this book espouses to be for the women that have been abused by male power and who have been killed by male serial killers like that's kind of like what it's what it's message is trying to put out is but then some of what happens at the end is like it tears all that apart like like takes out and shits on it so i just don't know i i mean i'm still probably gonna read stuff from riley sega because like one of the easiest sort of authors to read from but it does does it i think it needs to be discussed especially in the context of what happens in this book yeah that's tied into we do not and i mean do not do what happens at the end we don't do that ladies and gentlemen we don't do it i'm not gonna tell you i'm not gonna tell you what it is but if you've read it you know we just don't do that i need a cigarette and then finally edge law extravaganza j christof who again tied into like how it was written it's very like edgy and like i can't even think of examples but the way sometimes charlie thinks to herself and like makes this it reminds me a lot of nevernight by j christof which i'm not continuing with that series like kind of like edgy girl written from man's perspective and just the way it was written like the author tone of voice was not good okay but now let's discuss my conundrum because i actually don't know what to write it i'm not a hundred percent sure i've been thinking about it all morning right i've been going back and forth and i think because i literally could not put it down and i like for some reason i kind of enjoyed the experience of reading it even if the book is objectively offensive in some regards i think i'm settling on a 2.5 but i'm on goodreads because i don't want to give it like a three like for something that like i have more kind of objections to and the twists were really bad giving it three feels wrong so i'm gonna round it down to a two on goodreads but like in terms of my rating it i think it is a firm 2.5 i think i think if you want to know what everyone's talking about it's not going to take you long to read it i read this in like two three hours probably in total time of reading you know it's a super quick read it's kind of fun but it's shit so like swings and roundabouts you know anyway that's the end of this episode of wrapped up i hope you've enjoyed this vlog i've actually really loved doing this vlog i thought it was a lot of fun to chat about this book so maybe we need like really controversial picks wrapped up even though i also want to really enjoy what i'm reading so i don't know um but if you've gotten to the end put a car emoji in the comments down below and yeah thank you so much for watching and i'll see you very soon in another video bye