 Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Megan and this is another episode of Wrapped Up where I have wrapped up some of my books. At one point this was all of my books, but now it's a small percentage of my books. I unwrap one and I read it in a reading vlog in this video. Out of kindness to myself and my 2020-run reading slump, what I've been doing in the last couple episodes of this is that I have been unwrapping two and letting myself choose between them. So that's what we're gonna do again today because the reading slump hasn't ended. Don't get me started. Hmm, this I think for, oh, well, there she goes. This is like a hardback but a small hardback. So let's see. Oh, okay. This is Fable by Adrian Young. Now this is short. So like it's only 330 pages but it's like a very small book. This is a Little Mermaid retelling. I got this from a Fairy Loot box. I still haven't read any Fairy Loot books so this could be a really good, do I just go for this? I think I'm gonna unwrap another one just to be sure but part of me might just go for this because it seems like a really easy read but I don't know if I've heard very good things about it as well. I feel like it's had really mixed reviews. So let's unwrap another one. Another one. Another one. Should I go for this one? I'm gonna go for whatever this is. Let's unwrap a white one. Usually I try and make myself not unwrap the white ones at the moment. Oh, this is The Memory Wood by Sam Lloyd. This is a thriller about this guy who's lived in this wood for as long as he can remember and a girl there is being held by someone else but he doesn't want to tell the police that she's being held there because it's his like only friend that he's ever had come into the woods. Like obviously he's like not quite with it but yeah this was sent to me by the publisher so do I go for that? I think this would be easier for me to pick. I think in terms of rating I'd probably be more likely to rate this higher. I think you should go with The Memory Wood because I think when you get them to sort of what was this throw on you said? Yeah, it's like a thriller. Yeah, you like them. Usually probably these are page 10s. Okay, I think I'm gonna go with The Memory Wood because I think I'll probably be more likely to rate this high so we're gonna go for this. One week later. So it has been a week since I last spoke to you. I have not read a lot in that time. Oh no. This has now gone downhill. I'm still uni, fuck it. Like honestly, fuck it. I actually changed my mind. I started Fable because I'm also currently still reading having started this at the start of March, House of Leaves for the Literary Dead Book Club run by Books and Lala, which I'm co-hosting. This was March's book. I am 105 pages in. Now the thing is after like page 150-ish, 130, it does get a lot easier to read. There's a lot of like blank pages after that and I have read 50 pages at the end. I felt like The Memory Wood was similar in terms of its anxiety inducingness which is how this is making me feel. I'm already very anxious with uni and I find it hard to read it for a long period of time because it just like increases my anxiety. I am enjoying it but that's why I haven't got very far. So I chose to read Fable instead because I felt like The Memory Wood was too similar to House of Leaves and I needed something a bit lighter now. I'm 100 pages in. It's very boring. It's boring. You're joking. Not another one. Oh for God's sake. I can't honestly. I can't stand this. I literally don't care. Like I could DNF it but we're not going to because I don't I because it's such an easy book to read. Like I'm just like let's just do it. Let's just do it. Let's just read it. I don't think this is a little mermaid retelling. I think I was bullshitting on that front where I think I just saw water and red hair and assumed it was a little mermaid retelling. If it is, I don't see how. Like I don't see how. So basically Fable is our main character and she was abandoned by her father on this kind of island many years ago and has survived by herself and now she has gotten off the island on a ship of this mysterious young captain. Very convenient. Can you stop insinuating things please? She's on his ship and he's taking her to the Narrows so that she can basically confront her father. He doesn't know that but that's why she's there. How have we been through a third of this book and literally nothing has happened? I don't understand. I genuinely, this book ain't it. It's like a 2.5 I would say now it's just boring. I'm struggling to read it sometimes. Like I don't know my focus right now is just bad like we can just accept that but I'm having to read sentences over and over and over again to understand. I feel like the word flow isn't great between the words. Yeah I just feel like it's very like Stoppian Starty. The characterization of characters isn't great. It just feels like bland. It feels like if I was to equate this to a food I was going to say white bread but even white bread is more interesting. I thought to make ourselves a bit happier we would just quickly unbox the March Fairy Loot. I did start opening it days ago and then I thought hang on no we're gonna save this for a vlog so I haven't actually looked at anything. The theme this month is frozen fables which I'm very excited for as I think we're gonna get some Bear and the Nightingale things. So let's just grab the first thing we see. Oh there's a lot of things. This is gonna be a mug I'm guessing. Oh my god it's a Bear and the Nightingale. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. If you don't know the Bear and the Nightingale is one of my favorite. It's probably my favorite fantasy series. Oh my god this is about to be my mug. This is about to be the mug I use every day of my life. Oh my god I love you. It's Vassia. Oh my god. Oh let me put a nightbook. It's got like a rose on the front and it's like gradient pattern. That's very cute. It's by by Winter Song by S.J. Jones. Haven't read that. If you have let me know if I'd like it. Then we've got a headband. I'm not gonna try and fuck my hair up right now. Then we've got oh we got some sockies inspired by Even the Darkest Sea. Cute right? Oh we've got a phone ring holder inspired by is this Winterwood? All of these books are books that I have considered reading. So let me know if you've read Winterwood. That was one that I wanted for a long time. Really excited if it's gonna be like a wintery book like The Bear and the Nightingale. Oh oh youth. Okay so the book is The Bright and the Pale by Jessica Rubinowski. I hope I haven't butchered that. Tasman from T-Books and Tasman sent me a picture of this like a couple months ago now. I was like have you heard about this book? It sounds so interesting. It's kind of like The Bear and the Nightingale inspired and I was like oh my god I'm so excited. So I've been really excited for this. She found out about it because she works at Fairy Loot. You sneaky sneaky girl. I see you. So I think this is like a Russian inspired by Russian folklore. Wintery backdrop filled with fables, romance, tragedy, magic and monster. It's such a beautiful cover. We have got gorgeous sprayed edges which are glittery and then on the backdrop of this we have got an art print which is so pretty. Oh my god okay I'm really really excited to read this. Maybe it'll be when I pick up soon. I think actually I have a video idea which I had the other two books for so I think this will be the third book in that video. That won't be for like months until I've got my shit together but then we're gonna go all out on reading vlogs. Those of you that love reading vlogs I'm just gonna fucking go all out. I've got like 200 reading vlog ideas. So thank you Fairy Loot for sending me this. They do send it to me for free in order to show you guys and thank you so much. I love this. I'm super excited to read it. Now I'm gonna go continue with Fable and I'll let you know what I think when I read like another 100 pages. This jump of the last time I spoke to you. I have no idea. It's been a long time again. That's quite dramatic. I am now two thirds of the way in to this book to Fable. Nothing has fucking happened still. There is there's zero plot to this book other than this girl wanting to sail fucking sail across the sea and find her dad and this boat like there's no plot. There's no plot other than we're at sea. We're at sea everyone. Fuck okay I don't want to be I don't want to be mean right? There's been a lot of discussions I feel like recently around like reviewers versus author spaces. I know a lot of effort went into this. Like someone this was someone's life for a period and this isn't me. I am listen. We know in all my videos I'm slightly dramatic. Slightly slightly. It isn't to offend. This is for entertainment purposes and it's a review. You know what I mean? So we can we can talk about why I don't like. So I could forgive the no plot if there were two things. Number one if the characters were good but there's no characterization. There's okay how many characters we have our main character and we have the characters on the ship. There's West, there's Willa and then there's three other guys. One of them has a bit more of like a characterization to him. These two. These two. I don't know who the fuck they are. I don't know the difference between them. They have no characterization and even the ones who I could like name. There's not much there. Like there's there's not I think coming from reading Six of Crows and Cookie Kingdom where like what that does so well is character. Like the characters are so amazing. I'm like well this is just they're not they're not even characters. Do you know what I mean? Like there's not even any characters and secondly if the writing was like something I enjoyed but it's not. I am reading right sometimes and we end up I can't envisage this. Like we end up oh my god I hate it. Oh imagine we're on a street right? She's on a street and suddenly we're climbing up some ropes onto a ship or some shit and I'm like how did we end up here? Like I can't follow this book. It's beyond even not being able to envisage it. It's like we're fucking taking left turns every couple seconds. Like I it's generally not very readable to me. Like I generally have no fucking clue what's going on. I agree. I've had it and I'm sorry. You know what I've had? It. It. I'm reading it and the words just aren't flowing. Like this is something I can't explain but I've spoken about this before. I have a very particular thing about the words flowing right and like my brain is just I very rarely have this with books. I have this like maybe one in 30 books I have ever had this problem with where the words aren't in the right order for my brain to like compute those. I'm like what do you ever have this? Am I going insane? This is a problem I have sometimes with books because I'm very particular about like how the words like feel. This is okay. I'm like reading this. I'm like I actually have no idea what's happening. I actually have no idea what's happening. There were two pages just now that I was like wow we're really this is the best we've been yet because I could read it. Like I can actually understand what was happening, why it was happening, the dialogue was pretty good. That's all we've had. It's genuinely like it's a two star definitely. I'm like is this a one star? Is it a one star? But we all know 2021 hasn't been my year for reading and content. I know I've been letting you down a bit. We're gonna don't fucking worry. We're gonna go hard. We're gonna go balls to the wall in summer. As soon as uni is over oh my god when I tell you I have the rest of the year planned out. I have so many video ideas that I just can't do because I don't have the time or energy right now but I think I've only got like five weeks left of uni. So once that happens I'm gonna be a better person but but I think we can all recognize like I haven't loved books. I haven't loved that many books. I've given a few five stars out but not many. I have been reading that much so I think we can all understand. I'm not talking very well. It's kind of like who knows? Who knows what she's up to? No I'm not up to anything. I just had pasta. What the fuck am I saying? What I'm saying is some of it may be me but I really don't think it is. I'm just like generally don't think I would like it whenever I read it. But I am putting a disclaimer out there that some of it may be me. I'm gonna finish it but it's not good. I generally don't understand a single thing that's happening. So yeah I'm gonna go get in bed and read because I have to finish this the next couple days. I also need to finish House of Leagues the next couple days. I better shut the fuck up. So I'm gonna give it one star. No that sounds bad guys and forgive me for saying it but that's how I feel. It was not good but I've already said all that. I don't want to keep harping on about how I didn't like this book because it just feels a bit negative. Like I feel like we've had two on the trot bad wrapped up episodes. We've had a two star and a one star now. So I'm just not I'm just very unhappy. So I don't want to keep being negative. Like I feel like you don't come here for negativity. I don't want to keep going on about how I hate everything but regardless one star. So this may be if you care this may I may say some like slightly very very mild spoilers because it's a bit difficult to talk about it because like there's nothing to talk about. So if you care thanks for watching this far. Nice to see you. I'll see you in a couple days anyway. So there's like a romance which develops in the final third of this. We all knew it was gonna happen. This is why I say it's mild spoilers because like you go into this book knowing that's gonna happen but it came from nowhere. These characters had maybe said like five sentences to each other so far the entire book. You could genuinely fit I think onto two pages all of their dialogue throughout the whole rest of the book until you know it happens. Like they didn't think there was no chemistry. There was no chemistry. They didn't know each other. They hadn't like and suddenly uh no I'm sorry but no it's not realistic. It's just not realistic. It's not realistic. It's just not realistic. No ending to this like it didn't go anywhere you know how in a traditional book and here's the thing like books don't have to always adhere to the traditional format but it wasn't like we were rising towards some like denouement and then you know calming down like nothing happened like there wasn't like there was no there was nothing we were aiming towards there was no ending there was nothing like there was nothing nothing happened at the end like you know what I mean there wasn't that big ending or any ending or any kind of like resolution do I wish I had read the memory word yeah probably I reckon I probably would like this more but at the same time House of Leaves was heavy and so I don't feel like mentally I would have thanked myself for that either so wrapped up was just unkind to us for another month like what why have we had two terrible months in a row when like when I first did this I got so many five stars like my December that first run of it was so good and now we're out here getting two and one stars it just shows you the luck of the draw so yeah I hope you've enjoyed this video uh sorry it was sad again and I didn't like the book if you've gone to the end comment any kind of like sea emojis like a fishy or sea plants or anything like that and let me know if you have read this because I'll be interested on your thoughts I know it was like a kind of popular book in the past year or so or how long has been out six months something like that um yeah let me know if you've read this and I'll see you very soon in another video bye