 Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. I hope you're well. Welcome to episode two of Wrapped Up! If you don't know what this series is, basically I have wrapped up all of my physical TBR throughout the month of December. Every Tuesday I am unwrapping one of these and reading it in a dedicated reading vlog. The first these went so well. We had a five-star read. I'll link the first episode if you want to go watch that. I'm so excited to bring up another one! I think I'm having a meltdown. I was so not ready for that. See, the great thing about this series is that it makes me so excited to read all of the books on my TBR. Like, it really ignites that love of reading again, so I'm so excited. But the thing is, I haven't had a great reading week. I haven't been very well. I've been super busy with uni, so I'm only gonna have like a day to read this book. So it needs to be short. It needs to be one of the shorter books on my TBR. I don't know what to pick. Let's look. Let's pick a few out. That's kind of thin. That's pretty thin as well. That's quite tall, right? This is such a difficult decision. But I will be picking a top 20 winners. For some reason this one is calling out to me, but it's a bit bigger. Do I really want to do that? Let's try this one. This one is calling out to me for some reason. Okay. Okay. It's Burn Our Bodies Done by Rory Power. Burn Our Bodies Down is by Rory Power, which is the author of Wilder Girls, which I really loved. I think I rated that like a 4.5 this year, so I'm really excited to get to this. I've heard it's not quite as good from a lot of people who have read it. All I know is that it is about a girl and her relationship with her mother and wanting answers about her past. I think it is horror still, I'm pretty sure. But I have heard mixed things about it, so I am a bit nervous for it. But at the same time, I'm super, super excited because I loved Rory Power's writing. I think she is a writer. I am literally going to read forever and ever. Oh my god, this is such a good choice. Yay! Do you think all my books are good choices? But I am really happy with this one. This is a book that, if you watch my videos a lot, you know, like, has almost been in a lot of different things I've done. Like, I've wanted to read it so bad and I've always wanted to fit it into different videos. But it's never quite happened. But now, obviously it has. So I'm going to be reading Burn Our Bodies Down in this vlog and I'm super excited to read this. I completely forgot just how different Rory Power's writing style is and straight away I'm back into it and I'm like, OK, I vibe. Like, I can't describe it. It's just the way that the characters think. Like, the characters thought process is always a little bit off. Like, a little bit not how many of us would think, if that makes sense. And things are described in really strange ways. So, like, I forgot just how different and weird that is. But I'm, like, literally two pages in and I'm like, OK, I remember you and I'm ready. I have decided to wear my Christmas jumper today. I feel like I just need it. I need to get in the Christmas mood more. So I'm wearing, it's a Christmas jumper day today. I am 100 pages into Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power and if I'm honest, like, I don't know how I'm feeling about it yet. Apprehensive, nervous, bit scared, also weirdly calm, perhaps on the verge of hysteria. Essentially, we're following Margot as she has this very strange relationship with her mother. It's kind of manipulative in a way. The way that I would describe the way that, like, her and her mother view normalcy and how I love, like, in Wilder Girls, this happened as well. Her characters and the way they think and the way they act and the way they make decisions. It reminds me of what's that effect where you recognise something that you should know, but it's a little bit off. Do you know what I mean? What is that called? Oh, I don't, I can't find it. But do you know what I mean? Like, they'll talk about a painting where something you know has been painted, but there's something slightly off that makes you feel uneasy. But that's how her characters feel to me. They feel just ever so slightly off kilter, ever so slightly unrecognisable. The way that they think is just ever so slightly skewed. But basically, Margot runs away to go to the town where her mother is originally from because she finds out where that is. She finds out where her grandma is. Then a fire starts on her grandma's land. And that's all I want to say about it. But that's how the mystery gets introduced. But the mystery itself isn't introduced until, like, 70 pages in. And I assume that's kind of like the mystery we're going to go forward with. And I really struggled to read it before that mystery was introduced. Once that happened and something got revealed and there was something really strange happening, I was much, much more into it for the past 30 pages. But for the 70 pages before that, I just found it really difficult to read and to be interested in and to care. Like, I really kind of didn't give a shit. Do you see anybody care? This is people who love me. Oh, my God. Do you care? Like, I still love Roy Powers writing, but yeah, there was just something about it that I wasn't totally vibing with. I just didn't find it interesting to read until that point. But hopefully now that that's happened, I'm going to be much more interested in it. I would say it's a strange book. It reads strange. I don't think I'm going to love it as much as I loved Wilder Girls. I just don't think I am. And I don't know if I buy into Margot's character enough yet. I don't know. There's just something about it that isn't quite hitting me straight away like Wilder Girls did. And I'm kind of having to just like make myself read it. I am now on page 224. So I am only about 100 pages from the end. And like, I still don't know how I feel about it. I really don't. I'm enjoying it. Firstly, I don't think this is a horror. It may become a horror in some way towards the end. It's categorized as a horror on Goodreads. Oh, my God, that's my phone. I'm so sorry. I think the reason that it's categorized as a horror is that like Wilder Girls is a horror. So I think people just shelved it as horror before reading it possibly because of the next categorization is mystery. And I think mystery fits it better. A lot of reviews I read, I had a little look and people were like, Oh, my God, it's so spooky. I don't feel that intrigued. Essentially, Margot is trying to find out what her family isn't telling her, what her family has been lying to her about. But to me, it just, it feels a bit simple. I feel like Wilder Girls had a lot going on, a lot of different storylines, a lot of different elements. But it kind of really feels like there's one mystery and it feels very simple. And the plot feels a bit stagnant. Do you know what I mean? And like I speak about this quite often when I find it happens particularly in YA thrillers or mystery where everything leads on to the next thing, right? Like it's a very linear timeline, like a timeline with dot to dot. This leads to this. This leads to this. Whereas I like my thrillers and mysteries to be like... I'm not gagging. You know, like I like them to be all over the place and have dead ends and have really confusing things happening and some things are red herrings. And I just feel like this doesn't have that. I feel like it's a very straightforward line. I mean, I want to say like I'm enjoying it. It's like a three of 3.5, but it's not amazing to me right now. Maybe it'll get more wild. Like I want it to be as wild as Wilder Girls. I want it to be strange and disjointed and all over the place. I don't know, it just doesn't feel as well rounded as Wilder Girls was. I love the idea of it. I love the setting, this like rural, small town. There's been some really cool elements that we've just found out that I didn't see coming. Like me saying it's a straightforward line isn't me saying it's predictable. They're two different things. Yeah, it does feel to me younger than Wilder Girls. It feels not as challenging and interesting as Wilder Girls. I'm not going to hate comparing it to her other book, but like I'm going to do that. It's just a bit boring. The mum relationship is interesting. Like there's elements I'm enjoying, but on the whole, I'm just a bit bored. I'm sorry. So I'm going to go finish it tonight and then I will check in with you in the morning with what I think. I finished it and I'm going to give it three stars, maybe even a 2.75. Five in here. I can't believe that. I actually can't believe that. Ah! I don't know if that's a bit too harsh though. I did think the ending was cool, although a little bit not taken advantage of as much as I would have liked to see. This got suddenly much more horror as soon as I was like, oh, it's not very horror. A lot more kind of spooky things happened. Right at the end, it did build very suddenly and like some crazy shit went down. I think if you're looking for a book that deals with intergenerational trauma and how trauma can be passed on and how difficult it is to break that cycle, I think this is a great representation of that. However, it just feels like a representation of that. It doesn't feel like a book and a story that carries itself fully to me. I don't know if that's harsh, but I don't feel like any of the characters really are really well-developed, even Margot, but particularly characters like Tess and Eli who are the friends she makes in the town. They kind of serve as an end to her means. They kind of just serve a purpose for the story, but they don't have their own motivations necessarily to me. And I think that's a line that Rory Power treaded, tread, trod. You bitches are stupid. Very well, in Wilder Girls, the characters were kind of like, you only knew them for that moment. You only knew as much of them as a character knew or you had very limited information of them. I thought I did it very well in that, but this just, it just, I just wanted a bit more throughout. I think the ending is cool, but like I said, I wanted a bit more. I just, I just wanted a bit more. I just wanted a bit more in every regard. I feel like it was an idea stretched out rather than fleshed out. Ooh. See, I'm telling you, I have the mind of a master, master, I have the mind of a mastermind. What's that? I don't know, but- It needed more depth. It needed more stuff going on. It needed more reveals. The characters needed more depth, but I love the writing. I love the weirdness. I love the uniqueness of the ideas, but it just didn't fully reach it for me, which I'm sad about, but Rory Power is always gonna be like an autobiographer. I'm always gonna pick up her books. I'm always gonna read her books. I just think this one wasn't for me. I feel like a lot of people either like Wilder Girls or Burn Our Bodies down from what I've been reading. People tend to prefer one or the other. If you didn't really like Wilder Girls, maybe give this a go, because I've seen a lot of people who didn't really like Wilder Girls actually really enjoy this. I'm glad that I've read it. I also realized I forgot to say thank you to Molly. I feel like to tell you that this is a book that Molly has sent me. Both books we've read so far, like in this series, both books, last week's Book of Midnight Library and this one, were both sent to me by Molly. What are the chances? I'm sad, so I didn't love it. It probably is if I'm honest with myself that I think about it and I consider it and I try not to feel bad. It probably is a 2.75, so. So that is all for this vlog. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you're enjoying this series. I know I am so excited to see what I am gonna unwrap next. If you did enjoy it, it would help me out so much. If you subscribe, ring the bell and hit the like button. And if you've gotten to the end of this video, comment... Is there a corn emoji? Yeah, comment the corn emoji if you've gotten to the end of this video. Okay, I will see you very soon with another one. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you keep well until then. Bye!