 Welcome back to my channel, I hope you're good and Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Well Christmas will have already passed, this is gonna go up on the 27th, so it will have already have happened. But for me it is Christmas morning and I am going to unwrap all of my Christmas book presents. I just FaceTimed my family and we all unwrapped our present and I waited to unwrap all of my bookish ones so I can unwrap them on here with you guys. So we've got like three categories today. We've got presents from my grandparents, we have got presents from you guys from Amazon, we've got presents from my parents as well. So I think we're gonna do them in that order because my parents were in mind going last. But let's just get into it shall we? I can't believe how lucky I am to have received all of these books. Like this is a lot, this is gonna be a lot of books. I don't know how many it's gonna be but it's gonna be quite a few so thank you in advance to everyone who brought me books and let's just do it. I'm so excited! Christmas is the best time of year. I'm so excited to be here. Seriously, would I? This is the evening. So these are all from my grandparents. Thank you guys so much. I know you'll be watching. Let's see what this is. Oh! So first is Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia. Yes! Yes! This is a horror. I think did this win Goodreads Horror of the year this year? Yes it did. Horror is a genre I definitely want to get more into reading. I've enjoyed what I have read from horror but I haven't read loads. And all I know about this is that it is about a girl whose cousin contacts her saying that there's like some shady shit going on with her new husband and his family and so she travels there and like she's stuck in the house and like everyone says something whack happens with mushrooms. You know what? I'm just gonna leave. But I'm really excited to read this. I already have a video planned that this is gonna be in. I haven't planned any of the other books in that video but I know that this is in that video so hopefully I'll be able to do it soon and read this. Super excited to get to this one. Thank you so much. Oh! Okay so next we've got The King of Crows by Libba Bray. So this is the last in the Divina series which I have a mixed relationship with. I have loved books from that series and I gave the most recent one like a 2.5 so we've got a very mixed relationship. This is the last in the series. I'm really excited to finish the series off and just be like done with it to finally finish some series. Me every time I finish a series I'm free. I've gone out. 1920s and it's like a scooby gang group of friends trying to take down like ghouls and demons and they all have special divina powers. I've heard supermix things about this last one. I haven't heard many great things about it but I am excited to be back with these characters that we know really well and I'm excited to see how the story is all wrapped up. So this is gonna be one that I am hoping I'm gonna get to I think probably in like February, January, February I will get to this with a couple of other books. I'm yeah I'm nervous. I just really want to get this series done. I'm trying to unwrap it so you can see too. What is that? Oh okay okay okay okay. Next is The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Choksky. Okay so real talk right? Period team. I was never like that interested in this book. I know I think it's kind of like a heist book with like a group of friends. I remember loads of people wrongly said this was like a rip off Six of Crows when the author is POC and like in my view we've when this is often a discussion on like book twitter but like first of all Six of Crows does not own the heist genre of books and secondly like POC authors can write tropes that we would otherwise see as tired because like they haven't had the chance to write them. Anyway regardless of that I was never like super interested in it. It was kind of just a book that I didn't pick up on but then I was listening to the why can't I remember the name? Oh the first draft podcast. It's a podcast with loads of authors who get interviewed about how they write and tip to writers because I do eventually want to write. Have I written anything in the like four months I've been saying I want to write? No. But I've been doing the groundwork. Delusion. Convince yourself. And I just loved hearing Roshani Chokski talk. She has a very similar path to me in talking about how she always knew she wanted to tell stories but she felt pushed into journalism which is what happened to me. I've always wanted to tell stories but I felt like the most realistic thing was journalism so I did a journalism degree like her and I've fallen out of love with it like her and she also spoke about how she loves dramas or I just feel like we're the same person. That was the thing to the podcast I was like wow we are king of spirits. That made me just so much more excited to read this. Again I don't know too much about it. I think it may be set in like oh yeah set in Paris and I've heard it's like a bit of an older YA which is the kind of YA I like to read like a bit of a mature YA so as in that cover just gorgeous as well. I'm so excited. Thank you so much. Oh okay exciting exciting exciting. This is The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie. I... No I don't think you understand. I'm obsessed. This edition is so good. And then on the inside... Oh my god this is so beautiful. This is so gorgeous it's like cloth found. Wow. The story with this is basically I am working my way through all of Agatha Christie's books particularly the Poro series sorry I'm making my way through the Poro series. So this is the sixth in the Poro series. I haven't read the fifth one which is the big four. I do own that though and so on my Christmas list I just put the next one that I didn't own so I could get it in advance. I don't know too much about it since on the back you could perhaps love a thief Mademoiselle but not a murderer. I love Agatha Christie's books. I'm a big murder mystery fan. I love a classic murder mystery so I'm very excited to get this. I always like to put like on my wish list and ask for and buy the kind of like special editions the really gorgeous editions of the books if they do have them. I know you can get like all the matching paperbacks but I just find them a bit boring whereas like when you can have something like this like why wouldn't you? Like I just I just love it more if someone who likes to collect books I just think they're so gorgeous. I adore that. That's like one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. I think that's so stunning. Okay and then this is the last one from my grandparents. Okay got Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerry Maniscalco. For ages I've been talking about how I read Talking Jack the Ripper. I kind of enjoyed it but I didn't love it but it could have been great. You know what I mean? But I never had had the second one so I am so excited to have the second one so I can continue on with this series. I was like in such a mood for this in like October November kind of autumnal times because I feel like it's perfect for that kind of book. I remember I read number one like in the days before Christmas last year so it's been a year since I read that. The first one is about Audrey Rose who is like she's kind of like I'm not like other girls. I'm Jack the Ripper is killing people. She's trying to figure out who it is. There's a romance with Thomas Cresswell and I assume in this one we're going to be Hunting Prince Dracula so that's very exciting. Okay so next I am going to open, oh my god we have got a lot of books here. So I'm going to open this one first that was very kindly gift wrapped. Oh my god okay I'm really excited to get this. Who is this from? From Megan from Megan's Book Corner on Instagram. So this is disfigured on Fairy Tales Disability and Making Space by Amanda Laduk. Laduk? I'm not very good at pronouncing names but this is a non-fiction book speaking about how badly treated disabled characters are in fairy tales and Disney movies and stuff like that. I'm always willing to read non-fiction. I particularly want to get back into non-fiction a bit because it's hard when I'm making loads of vlogs to fit non-fiction into them and a lot of people aren't interested in non-fiction but I love it. I used to read half non-fiction before I started my booktube channel and then I just stopped. I'm really intrigued with this. It sounds super educating. It is pretty short as well, it's pretty small. I think disability isn't really something I've read about before. I've maybe read like chapters on it in some non-fiction but I haven't read a whole book on it. Disability is something we don't discuss enough on booktube and stuff like that so I'm really excited to read this so thank you so much Megan. That is so kind of you. Let's open this one next because I wrote on it Nicole because it was the first one that arrived so I know it's from Nicole because she couldn't put a note with it. There's two books in here she said and she said one is for my birthday and one is for Christmas because my birthday is at the end of January and so because she's from Australia it makes sense to like save on shipping and stuff? No. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It was like oh my god. That shit took me, caught me off guard. I didn't expect it. Oh my god, okay. Nicole has got me The Strange Case with the Alchemist's Daughter and the Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl by Theodora Goss. If you watched my Best Books of 2020 video you will know that this is the only book that is one of my best of 2020 that I didn't own. I read the audiobook of this and I've always wanted to own the physical version and now I do. I'm so happy. She also got me the last book in the series. I do own the second one and now I've got the last one and I am terrified but also so excited to read this but I talked about this a lot so you probably know already. Hang on, the sun is like shining in in a really weird way. Sorry about that. I'll try and keep up here because if I'm like here it's just my chin is really shiny. She's huge but she's so beautiful. She's a mammoth of course. I've got a really pointy chin as it is so this isn't helping. So in this we follow the Athena Club who is a group of girls who are somehow linked to men from classic Victorian history and they are trying to find out the truth about what these men have really been doing. Sherlock and Watson are in this and they help the girls and work with the girls and it's just the perfect Victorian mystery. It breaks a fourth wall in really cool ways. They will just like cut in to what one another is saying like when the book is happening if they're not happy with what is being said they'll cut in and try and amend it. I love this series so much so thank you so much Nicole. I can't believe that. I'm so shook that's so kind of you to get me those. They are some of the most gorgeous covers as well like I'm just obsessed with the the covers of these and yeah I'm so happy. Oh thank you so much that's so amazing. This one seems to be missing its note so if you did get this for me please let me know but this is when the tiger came down the mountain by Nouveau. I am so excited. This just came out I think a couple weeks ago and these are really short stories. The first one is the Empress of Sword and Fortune which I read and really really enjoyed. They're these kind of like short stories with this cleric called Chi. They all follow the cleric meeting people and finding stories out about them and it's very much inspired by like Asian mythology and stuff like that. The first one was so touching and beautiful and moving. These books are so good for stuff like readathons and stuff like that. Yeah I'm really really excited to get this one. Please let me know if you're the person who got this for me because I'm very thankful. Okay so these are from Kien from Pepper Reads. Oh thank you. This is so kind of you. Oh my god. I'm really happy today. Yeah this is for all of us. Thank you so much. Kien got me first Forgotten Room in the Writers by Xing Sheng which I am ecstatic about. I have really been wanting to continue this series. This is an amazing series. I have read Forgotten Women the Leaders. There's four in total so this is my second one and it's all about Forgotten Women through history. It's non-fiction. You basically just have like a couple pages on them telling you about all the extraordinary things they've done. Oh my god this one has incredible artwork in too. So there's amazing artwork with all of these women by loads of different artists. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I can't wait to read this and see all this amazing artwork. I just have a bit of obsession with learning about Forgotten Women throughout history. I just think it's literally the most interesting thing to read about. It's only like 200 pages long. They're really accessible and I really appreciate because the author is an Asian woman I think there's a real effort that these books be really diverse. So it's women from all over the world from all different time periods from all different cultures from all different countries and so I think it's just such a rich history of women. So thank you so much for that. And then they also got me The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. I believe this is horror as well. This is one a lot of people have been speaking about. I don't know too much about it other than it's about some friends who oh yeah okay yeah 10 years ago they shot an elk and now they're being stalked themselves and hunted. Very intrigued. Very intrigued. I'm really interested in having that conversation. I have to tell you that. So thank you so much. That is so generous and kind of you. I still can't believe it when I get sent books like it kind of always makes me cry. We've got two more Amazon parcels. We've got a really big one here. Let's open this one first. Oh oh my god Gabby. Gabby thank you so much. Oh my god Gabby thank you so much. Gabby has got me The Year of the Witching by Alex Henderson. This was up for horror as well. We've got loads of horror in this book haul which bodes well for me wanting to read more of it. So I know this is like a mix of horror fantasy and historical fiction. It's about that kind of like Salem witching period. I am gonna be co-hosting Erin from Booked and Busy's Book Club where we're gonna be reading this. I will make sure I link the announcement video for that so you can go check the Busy B Book Club out. So I'm really excited to read this and chat about it in like greater depth. I'm always wanting to read more witchy books. There is this book that I can't remember what it was. I got it out the library when I was really young and I remember it was about witches and like Salem trials and I just loved it. I just have a really vivid memory of reading that book and I'm constantly chasing it trying to get that again. Push me up against the wall. Give me a kiss. Then I might get excited. Thank you so much Gaby. That is so kind of you. Now I've got one more Amazon parcel and it's a big boy. Oh my god. Oh my god. Okay we got a lot of books here. Oh wow. Okay so these are all from my aunt. Hi Debbie. Okay wait let's get into this. Okay thank you so much for all of these. So first we've got King of Skulls by Lee Bardugo which I am so excited to own. That's what Christmas is about isn't it? Yeah I have not read Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom yet but I promise you I will be reading it soon. I know I keep saying that and this is like the next kind of series in the Grisha verse. I know this is following Nikolai who is like the prince if I remember and Zoya who was another character in like the original Shadow and Bone trilogy and then I think Nina from Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom also has quite a big role in this. I love the cover for the sequel to this. Is it Rule of Wolves? I'm pretty sure it's Rule of Wolves and I love Ninth House. I will die on this hill. I just love Ninth House by Lee Bardugo so much so I'm so excited to get into her other stuff and then I don't know if you know this Debbie but you've bought me. This is so cool. I don't know if you can tell on the on Amazon because you've brought me two books by the same author but it's different pen names. Is it a co-incident? Is it a co-incident? I ask you is it a co-incident? First I talk about Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire. This is the fifth I think in the Wayward Children series. I have read all the first four but I don't I've never owned them. I've always just listened to the audiobook but I really love this series. I give them all like a really high four stars so I wanted really badly to own this one before I read it. I want to eventually collect all of this series. We are following these kids who can open doors into these worlds that are perfect for them personally and they can live in these worlds but sometimes they come back and then it's really hard for them to readjust to this world which is so shit for them. Sometimes follows us at Eleanor West's home for Wayward Children which is where these children can go to kind of cope with it or it follows them in their portal world. We're back in the home in this one and I think I usually prefer the ones in the home but we're gonna be focused on Jack and Jill again who are characters that we have had in number one and two but particularly in number two. It focused on their story so I am so excited for this, really really excited. And then we have also got Over the Woodward Wall by A Debra Baker but it is Seanan McGuire still so this is a book that is in Middle Game by Seanan McGuire. A Debra Baker is a character in Middle Game and so I'm really excited to read this. Again it's very short. Well guess what people? I get excited about small things. I just really love Seanan McGuire's writing and they're probably one of my most read authors. Thank you so much Debbie and then we've also got one of the books I've wanted for the longest time and that is The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson. So this is the third in the Trudy Devious series which is a young adult mystery series set at this school for exceptional children. The other two books have kind of flipped back and forth between murder that is happening at the school now and a murder that happened in 1930s but I'm not sure if that's kind of all solved now. I did think originally that this was the last book in the series but there's going to be another one. These are like the perfect palette cleanser, quick easy read, so fun to read like they're perfect for that so I am so excited to own this. Thank you so much. Now we have got, I can't even hold them all up but we've got all the books from my parents. My mum was like, I just looked and I bought you the ones that I want to read. See I'm telling you I have the mind of a master, I have the mind of a master. What's that? I don't know but you know I'm so creative like that. Let's unwrap this one first that's on top. Oh okay hang on, everyone wait. The first two books that my family have got me, I opened this one and that is the third book in the series and I was like okay I'm guessing they got me the second one. These are numbers two and three in the Themis Files by Sylvain Nouvelle so we have got Waking Gods and Only Human. These are really a really cool book. Again with this I don't own the first one, I read the audiobook and I enjoyed it so much that I decided I wanted to get the physical books and eventually I will hopefully own the first one as well to have the whole series but I wanted to own the physical books and listen to the audiobook at the same time because the audiobooks are amazing like I think if you're only going to own one, own the audiobook but I loved it so much I wanted to own the physical books as well but this is very similar to the Illuminae Files. This is told through reports, we have got a lot of interviews. Basically the first one there's this like robot being built from these massive parts like an arm will be as big as a street and they're being like drawn out of the earth so like they're wrecking the world like drawing them out of the earth. It's being built and there's a lot of like weird sci-fi stuff going on like where these come from they've obviously been built by something that isn't us. That's what we want to say but it's told in such a unique way also these covers are very pretty I don't think like the camera is like picking up on them enough so thank you so much mom and dad it's so weird unwrapping these on my own. Oh yay okay this is really exciting not many people will care about this who are watching. I'm here to tell you right now we don't care. But this is Save the Cat writes a novel this is a book that a lot of people recommend if you want to get into novel writing and I do so I wanted it really bad. There's not much I can say because not a lot of people care about novel writing but I really want to get into writing really bad. I always love a short book I feel like I had run out of all of my short books and like I'm pretty stacked up now for a while. Oh yay! They got me The Deep by River Solomon with Davide Diggs, William Hudson and Jonathan Snipes. I have got the audiobook for this as well I heard that the audiobook was incredible but again it feels like such a momentous book that I wanted to own it physically as well. So even just the first line of this is very impactful it says Yetu holds the memories for her people water dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone save one the historian this demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu so it is about this character who remembers all of the pain and trauma for their family I guess. I have just heard so many amazing things about this I'm very very excited to get to it. What is this? Oh yay! Okay this is one I told my mom to buy specifically. This is Supernova by Marissa Mayer. This is the final book in the Renegade series which is a series about superheroes. I have not read any of this series this year like I read books one and two last year and then I didn't buy this this year. Are you not ashamed of yourself? Are you not embarrassed? I am so excited to finally own it and I've heard really good things about the end like I've heard unlike like King of Crows I've heard that the last book is the best book in this series. This society has the Renegades and the yeah the Anarchists and our main character was born into the Anarchists and she goes under cover to become a Renegade to like feed information back but then she starts to develop feelings for people and it's all very messy but it's actually really enjoyable. I think Marissa Mayer is just a really great young adult author who I will read whatever she puts out. Loyal. I'm very loyal. Very very loyal. Yeah yeah I was loyal to you. I'm a very loyal girl. Yeah I know that yeah. This will be one I'm gonna read at the start of the year like I am. I just feel like it's time to finally finish this series. Okay this is this is one that I again I knew they'd got this to me. It is The Weight of the Stars by Kay Ankrim so I have read The Wicker King by Kay Ankrim and this is their other book. I've heard so many good things about it. I've heard a lot of people prefer it to The Wicker King. I know it's something to do with space and the stars and like wavelengths as you can kind of tell by the cover but I don't know much more about it than that but Kay Ankrim's writing is really interesting. It's very strange and surreal and a bit like fabulism kind of thing so I am really really excited. I'm really really excited for this. Come on again. This is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander so this is a book about how mass incarceration in prisons in America is like a new form of racism and control and slavery. Michelle Alexander was one of the main contributors in the Document 313 which is about mass incarceration and prison being a new form of slavery in America and so when I watched her speak about the topic on that documentary I knew it was something that I wanted to learn about more so I'm really looking forward to reading this but also I know it's gonna be a hard read. It's like in terms of just seeing that amount of injustice like it's such a hard but necessary read. I think this will be really really educational. I think it'll be something that a lot of people my family want to read as well. I think like my mum will want to read this, my boyfriend will want to read this because I think it's something we all need to learn and educate ourselves on so really happy that I now own that. Okay what next? Oh fun! Okay wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I don't know how well the like US ones of you will know this in Canada and all over the world but this is the Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman so this is the the UK Christmas number one book and it's selling like record amounts of books every week like it's selling more books in like its 15th week than most books sell on their first week like most bestsellers sell in their first week. It's absolutely taken over the UK. It says in a peaceful retirement village four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders but when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep the Thursday Murder Club finds themselves in the middle of their first live case. So I'm really intrigued by this. Again this is like one that's been massive in the UK but I don't know if it's as big worldwide but you know I love a bit of murder. You know I love a murder mystery so any like modern murder mystery that comes out and is getting there's a hype I have to read. I know this is one that my mum really wants to read too which is why she's gotten it for me. That's so exciting oh my god wow I'm so excited to get to that one. Oh yay okay so this is the couple next door by Sherry Lapina which is a lovely classic easy thriller we love to see it so this is about a couple who's at like a dinner party at their couple next door. The couple says we don't want your daughter crying at our dinner table so you take the child back to your house put it you know in bed with the baby monitor and the child gets stolen. This is like a really popular thriller I have read An Unwanted Guest by Sherry Lapina and I really liked it it was like a strong four star so after that I knew I wanted to get into her other stuff so this is what I picked first. This is probably her most well-known best-selling one really excited to get to that one oh my god I'm just so lucky look at all these amazing books I like I really can't believe it this is crazy okay and then we've got one last book oh my god yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm really happy with what I'm seeing. This is probably one of the books has been on my wish list the longest I've wanted this for a really long time and that is The Fountains of Science by Ruta Sopetis so I've never read Ruta Sopetis and I feel like she's the kind of author that people speak about on booktube all the time but this was one that came out last year and I don't know that's set in Madrid set during like the dictatorship I think I'm so excited to finally own this because I literally have wanted to own this for like years this is one of the first books I ever put on my wish list so if I hold this up these are all the books I got for Christmas how many did we end up with 26 books for Christmas that is insane I feel so lucky thank you to anyone that bought me a book all of my family watching this thank you so much we've done pretty amazing like there are so many amazing books here that I am just so excited to read let me know down below if you've read any of these which ones I should get to first let me know which ones you've read and also let me know what you've got for Christmas for any books that you got for Christmas if there's any that I've recommended that you've got I would love to know thank you for watching this video if you've got to the end leave the wrapped present emoji so I know you've gotten to the end and yeah thank you so much watching I will see you very very soon bye