 Welcome back to another episode of Wrapped Up. This is gonna be the most chaotic one yet. This is gonna be the most chaotic one. I hope you can forgive me. Sweet chat anyway. Hold you spending shit you can see here. That's where I shoved shit. Oh my goodness, I'm so embarrassed. So embarrassed, they love you. I was hoping, when I thought of the idea for this series, I was hoping I wouldn't be busy. But I'm still busy. We've got two days. It's Sunday night. This goes up Tuesday night. I've got to edit the video. I haven't unwrapped anything yet. And tomorrow I need to write 1,000, 1,500, at least, words of an essay that I've got. I've got like a 4,000 words, 3,500 word essay. But I've got to do... I'm sorry, it just hit me just now. Do it, it's fine. Before we get into it, I'm saying this at the start because I want your advice. Do we think we should make this a regular series once a month in the new year? I wanna do it because I'm having a lot of fun doing it. And also, I know a lot of you really enjoy them. However, number one, I was gonna do an All My Unread Books video or my own Unread TBR video. I won't be able to do that if we decide to do the series in the new year. And number two, I don't want it to lose its specialness. I don't want it to become repetitive. And so part of me wants to keep it as like just something we do at Christmas. So let me know down below. Would you be okay with me not doing an All My Unread Books video in return for like doing an episode of this a month alongside all my other reading vlogs? Or do you think we should just keep it as something special for Christmas? So again, we want a short book. I'm gonna buy the audio book for whatever I pick just because that's self care and I need it. Treat yourself 2011. What should we pick? Do you know what I'm gonna do because like self love is an important thing? I think I'm gonna let myself unwrap too and then decide out of those two. I think I deserve that. So this is really short. I don't know what the fuck this could be. Yeah, that can be one of the choices. And then let's pick like a short paper bag. Which one's shorter out of these two? I think this one. Okay, let's do the white one first. I don't know what this is. Oh! Oh, okay. This could be a good one. So this is You Must Not Miss by Katrina Leno. I don't know much about this. I just picked it up because it's something I know a lot of people enjoy. Oh my God, it's under 300 pages. I'm already feeling good about this. I might just, should I just read this? Do I even want to unwrap this? Part of me just wants to read this. Like, I feel like this is exactly what I need right now. Do you know what? I'm not even unwrapping this one. I don't need it. I don't need it. We're gonna read this. Aha! Because I haven't hauled this yet, I completely forgot I even owned this. I'm so excited now. This is, this is, I love good news. Love good news. I just love good news. Like I've been reading a lot of like kind of general fiction, like general adult fiction for the Mariah Carey vlog. I just want something a bit simpler, a bit like faster paced. So I feel good about this. Can you believe I didn't unwrap the second one? I think we're just gonna find out what this is about together as the reading vlog goes on. I'm so happy. Okay, let's go read this. That was such a good opening. That was such a good opening for pages to a book. I love it. I love it. Guys, could I have another five star read before the year is over? I'm just so lucky to be a part of this history. I'm really loving this. Basically, we're following Magpie. As six months ago, she walked in on her father cheating on her mom with her arm, messy. And that's kind of torn her family apart. Her mother has become an alcoholic, her sister left. And obviously her dad is not in the picture. And so she's really struggling and something happened also on the night that her sister left that meant that she fell out with her best friend of all her life. She writes about this place called Nir in this notebook that she has that is supposed to be this place that is magical and wonderful and she is safe in it. I'm 88, 89 pages in by the way. So like Nir's like her dream place and she's always writing about what's brilliant about it. And then now it seems like she may be able to travel there. So that's kind of like our fabulism element to it. I'm really loving this. I think Magpie is such an interesting character. I think this is like young adult set in high school but it's exploring it in a really, really interesting way. It reminds me a lot of AS King in how that fabulism element is handed so well. I am obsessed with the writing. I'm obsessed with all the characters. I think all of her friends, her new friends that she has feel so vivid even if I barely know them. Like there's a few of them I barely know but we've just been given the perfect information on them. The perfect like view of them. And suddenly I know everything. Katrina Leno be like. I'm a genius. I'm a fucking genius like. It reads so fast. I was flying through it and I'm really, really interested to see where it's gonna go. Like I don't know where it's gonna go and that really excites me. I haven't even read the blurb like I wanted to go into it completely blind. There's just something about the writing. You know when you find a writer and you're like, this is it. This is it. Like this is the writer for me. Like this is it. You just find a writer who's writing you just completely gel with and love. That's what I feel when I'm so happy. It's really not shying away from so many difficult topics and I really, really appreciate that. I wanted to go a really weird direction. I really wanted to. I haven't even got the audiobook because I'm just flying through it. I don't think I'll need it. It's really interesting how Megapile is having to fend for herself now and just the psychology of that. You know, she's really, really alone. And suddenly there's this place that it seems to be everything that she has dreamed of. So I'm really excited. I think this could be like a new favorite. Obviously it's very early days but I'm gonna go read like another 90 pages and then I'll check in with you again when I'm about two thirds of the way through. We've just been learning more about this world called near. I don't want to spoil anything obviously but I don't feel like much has actually happened to spoil because it is quite a simple plot but I am still loving it. I need to move these books. No one says that, but yes. Okay, work. I'm still obsessed. I really, really love the writing style. I like straight away last night went and added Katrina Lennon's other books to my like want to read on Goodreads. I have a feeling stuff's about to go wrong though. Like I feel like we've been lured into this full sense of security for a good chunk of the book and suddenly shit is about to hit the fan. So I'm really, really nervous for that. Honey, you've got a big storm coming. I feel like this could have like a bit of a, a kind of ending that makes you go like, oh, ah, you know what I mean? Like, oh, no, no. You know what I said before? I think Magpie is such an interesting character and I just love the weirdness of this. Like I think a good comparison is AS King. Like it definitely reminds me of stuff like Dig by AS King. So if you like that weirdness, this is it. Like I want to read more stuff like this going into next year, like contemporary with fabulism. Give me weird shit. Just give me weird shit. Weird shit is all I need. I don't want to say what the weird stuff is because I feel like it's a bit of a spoiler. I would rather you go into it and find that out when reading it. This book is killing it so far. This video is going up tonight. I've edited up until now, but I need to kind of go back and forth between reading this and writing my essay today. I'm going to finish off my essay and so stressed out about it. So once that's out of my life, I can like calm down and everything will get a lot easier in my brain. So I know I just want to finish the essay today, but I obviously need to read the last 90-ish pages so I can read this, so I can upload this video. So I'm just going to kind of switch back and forth between everything and I will check back in with you when I have finished it. I'm nervous. Oh my God. One piece of advice, don't read anything. If you don't read it, it can't harm you. So shook. I love the direction this went in. I can't say what because I don't want to spoil it, but like when I finish this, I genuinely feel like I aged 10 years. Like I feel like all the life has been sucked out of me. Me at the book. Are you on drugs? Are you fucking on drugs? This was like gruelling. I feel like I'm 50 years old. So if you can't guess, I loved it. I'm going to give it five stars. I filmed my top 10 of the year already, but this could be up there in that. So like when you see that video, this may have been in there if I'd read it earlier. This, I looked on Goodreads and there's only 1,400 ratings, which really isn't that many. So I feel like I'm going to be recommending this book forever to everyone because not enough people are reading it. Like it was so good. It deals with what happens to a girl and the result of being alone and being ignored and shitty things happening to you over and over again. Major trick warnings in this for sexual assault, alcohol addiction, suicide, depression, maybe I would say as well. This was like badass. It felt but sick reading it. There was a very drastic jump. Literally the drastic jump started from when I last checked in with you. And I feel like maybe it just needed a bit more in that kind of section towards the end to bring us to the events of what actually ends up happening. I understand without spoiling anything. I understand why it happened like that because that is in its own way realistic. However, I feel like as a reader, we just needed like even just only 40 more pages exploring some of that. But I do understand why it was like zero to 100. I loved it. Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique. This is weird. This is like so weird. If you love weird books, if you love like A.S. King, kind of reminds me of like K. Ankram as well. Definitely more A.S. King, but that kind of like fabulism kind of thing with like a really dark side to it. This is so good. I can't emphasize to you enough how good it is. The writing is incredible. It's witty. It's full of dark humor. It's clever writing. Let me stand by the window, honey dear, honey dear. And I loved it. I loved how it explored the issues that it covered in a really unique way. And I love a book that doesn't A, give you any ending. This doesn't have any ending. You don't. It reminds me a lot of the ending of Wilder Girls. Like not as abrupt as the ending of Wilder Girls, but definitely a lot of unanswered questions. Also the end, you don't know how you feel. And I love that. I love endings that leave you feeling conflicted about the events and about the characters. This is amazing. I cannot wait to read the rest of Katrina Leno's stuff. I need to stop sleeping on her and I need to read Horrid. I need to read what's her other really one-in-one, it's Summer of Salt, isn't it? This book feels like, okay, I hate my analogies. This bitch, here she go again. But it feels like a beautiful knife. Like a really intricately carved knife, but it's like fucking sharp and deadly. It's like meh. Cause the writing is so beautiful and clever, but it's like, like it cuts straight to the core. I was gagged. It was amazing. It was so good. I'm so glad that I unwrapped this. It would have taken me ages to get to this. Had I not unwrapped it now. Covering dark topics, amazing writing. Just pick it up. Just pick it up. It's so good. I hope you're enjoying this series. If we've got to the end, comment, comment the spider emoji, cause I feel like similar vibes. Let me know if you're enjoying this series. I can't believe how close it is to Christmas. Like we're like three days away. Yeah, thank you so much for watching. I will see you very, very soon. Bye.