March 16, 2017
03/16/17
By Subscription Box Mom
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Book of the Month March 2017 Review + 1st Box $5
Disclosure; This post contains affiliate links. I received this box for review
Book of the Month March 2017 Review
Book of the Month is a book subscription box that sends a brand new book for as low as $10.47/month.
On the first of the month, you log into your account and choose between five different books, picked out by Book of the Month Judges. There are authors, editors and more on the judging panel. There is also one guest judge each month. You must make your selections by the 14th, or Book of the Month will pick for you. If you don't like any of the books, you can skip!
Once you make your book selection, you can add up to two books to your account for $9.99/each. Once you get your book, you can log into your account and join the discussions.
The Details:
Cost: $16.99/month, $14.99/month for a 3 month subscription and $11.99/month for a 1 year subscription.
Coupon: Get your 1st month for $5.00 today, just use this link or save 3-Months for $9.99/month plus a free BOTM tote
What's in the box? On the first of the month, you will get to select from 5 different books.
I was sent all 5 book selections for review.
First Look. Each book comes with a bookmark from the judge that picked each book.
Each book comes wrapped in plastic.
The books are always wrapped on a larger card, so the edges of the book don't get banged up.
The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel – Judge: Liberty Hardy This is a true story about a man who spent 27 years living in the woods in Maine. I don't typically read many nonfiction books, but this one really looks interesting.
Book Summary: In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later, when he was arrested for stealing food. Living in a tent even through brutal winters, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store edibles and water, and to avoid freezing to death. He broke into nearby cottages for food, clothing, reading material, and other provisions, taking only what he needed but terrifying a community never able to solve the mysterious burglaries. Based on extensive interviews with Knight himself, this is a vividly detailed account of his secluded life—why did he leave? what did he learn?—as well as the challenges he has faced since returning to the world. It is a gripping story of survival that asks fundamental questions about solitude, community, and what makes a good life, and a deeply moving portrait of a man who was determined to live his own way, and succeeded.
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg – Judge: Laia Garcia (Deputy Editor, Lenny Letter) Andrea Bern is trying to discover who she is, while being surrounded by people who know their path. When Andrea's niece is born with a health problem, the family must ban together. This book takes you on a journey of a girl trying to find her place in the world.
Book Summary: Who is Andrea Bern? When her therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh—that feels the most true. Everyone around her seems to have an entirely different idea of what it means to be an adult: her best friend, Indigo, is getting married; her brother—who miraculously seems unscathed by their shared tumultuous childhood—and sister-in-law are having a hoped-for baby; and her friend Matthew continues to wholly devote himself to making dark paintings at the cost of being flat broke. But when Andrea’s niece finally arrives, born with a heartbreaking ailment, the Bern family is forced to reexamine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart? Told in gut-wrenchingly honest, mordantly comic vignettes, All Grown Up is a breathtaking display of Jami Attenberg’s power as a storyteller, a whip-smart examination of one woman’s life, lived entirely on her own terms.
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid – Judge: Leigh Haber (Books Editor, O Magazine) This story is about Nadia and Saeed are in a war-torn area and decide to escape.
Book Summary In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. . . .
Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.
Dead Letters by Caite Dolan-Leach – Judge: Sarah Weinman Ava came from a rough up-bringing and decided to escape. Years later, she find out her twin sister burned alive in a tragic accident. After getting a cryptic message, she questions whether her sister is alive.
Book Summary Ava Antipova has her reasons for running away: a failing family vineyard, a romantic betrayal, a mercurial sister, an absent father, a mother slipping into dementia. In Paris, Ava renounces her terribly practical undergraduate degree, acquires a French boyfriend and a taste for much better wine, and erases her past. Two years later, she must return to upstate New York. Her twin sister, Zelda, is dead.
Even in a family of alcoholics, Zelda Antipova was the wild one, notorious for her mind games and destructive behavior. Stuck tending the vineyard and the girls’ increasingly unstable mother, Zelda was allegedly burned alive when she passed out in the barn with a lit cigarette. But Ava finds the official explanation a little too neat. A little too Zelda. Then she receives a cryptic message—from her sister.
Just as Ava suspected, Zelda’s playing one of her games. In fact, she’s outdone herself, leaving a series of clues about her disappearance. With the police stuck on a red herring, Ava follows the trail laid just for her, thinking like her sister, keeping her secrets, immersing herself in Zelda’s drama and her outlandish circle of friends and lovers. Along the way, Zelda forces her twin to confront their twisted history and the boy who broke Ava’s heart. But why? Is Zelda trying to punish Ava for leaving, or to teach her a lesson? Or is she simply trying to write her own ending?
Marlena by Julie Buntin – Judge: Steph Opitz This story is about a friendship between Cat and Marlena. Marlena helps Cat get her first kiss, pill, drink and cigarette. Not a year passes before Marlena is found drowned in a pool. After years of putting Marlena behind her, a ghost from the past returns.
Book Summary Everything about fifteen-year-old Cat’s new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter, until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena’s orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts―first drink, first cigarette, first kiss―while Marlena’s habits harden and calcify. Within the year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. Now, decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try to forgive herself and move on, even as the memory of Marlena keeps her tangled in the past.
Final Thought: March's book selections really were pretty diverse. As usual, there are multiple books I want to read. The Stranger In The Woods will be the first book I read this month. If you want to try Book of the Month, check out these great offers: get your 1st month for $5.00 today, just use this link or save 3-Months for $9.99/month plus a free BOTM tote.
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