Book Riot has a new mystery box featuring their favorite beach reads. (This box is still available).
My Subscription Addiction paid for this box. (Check out the review process postto learn more about how we review boxes).
The Box: Surprise Beach Reads 2015
The Cost: $100
The Products: Start your summer with four secret Riot-approved books and a selection of items from the Book Riot Store. (Does not contain any repeats from Book Riot’s Quarterly or YA Quarterly subscriptions. Total retail value of contents exceeds $100.) Purchase of this box sends one book to a community in need.
The box comes with a letter detailing the bookish items included, and the 4 selected books.
Jane Austen Tote Bag - Value $18
I love this tote! It's made with sturdy canvas and has an inner pocket too.
Out of Print Banned Books Socks - Value $10
These socks are fun - on one sock the book titles are censored, and on the other sock the titles are visible.
Read More Books Water Bottle - Value $15
This bottle is BPA free and dishwasher safe - works for me!
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma - Retail Value $26 (On Amazon for $17.77)
Book summary from Amazon:
In a Nigerian town in the mid 1990's, four brothers encounter a madman whose mystic prophecy of violence threatens the core of their close-knit family.
Told from the point of view of nine year old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, THE FISHERMEN is the Cain and Abel-esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990's Nigeria, in the small town of Akure. When their strict father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the ominous, forbidden nearby river, they meet a dangerous local madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings.
What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact-both tragic and redemptive-will transcend the lives and imaginations of its characters and its readers. Dazzling and viscerally powerful, The Fishermen never leaves Akure but the story it tells has enormous universal appeal. Seen through the prism of one family's destiny, this is an essential novel about Africa with all of its contradictions-economic, political, and religious-and the epic beauty of its own culture.
With this bold debut, Chigozie Obioma emerges as one of the most original new voices of modern African literature, echoing its older generation's masterful storytelling with a contemporary fearlessness and purpose.
Lumberjanes Volume 1 by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooke Allen, and Shannon Waters - Retail Value $14.99 (On Amazon for $10.77)
Book Summary from Amazon:
Five best friends spending the summer at Lumberjane scout camp...defeating yetis, three-eyed wolves, and giant falcons...what’s not to love?!
Friendship to the max! Jo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley are five best pals determined to have an awesome summer together...and they’re not gonna let any insane quest or an array of supernatural critters get in their way! Not only is it the second title launching in our new BOOM! Box imprint but LUMBERJANES is one of those punk rock, love-everything-about-it stories that appeals to fans of basically all excellent things. It’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Gravity Falls and features five butt-kicking, rad teenage girls wailing on monsters and solving a mystery with the whole world at stake. And with the talent of acclaimed cartoonist Noelle Stevenson, talented newcomer Grace Ellis writing, and Brooke Allen on art, this is going to be a spectacular series that you won’t want to miss. Collects Lumberjanes #1-#4.
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell - Retail Value $14.99 (On Amazon for $12.30)
Book Summary from Amazon:
London, 1976. In the thick of a record-breaking heatwave, Gretta Riordan’s newly retired husband has cleaned out his bank account and vanished. Now, for the first time in years, Gretta calls her children home : Michael Francis, a history teacher whose marriage is failing; Monica, whose blighted past has driven a wedge between her and her younger sister; and Aoife, the youngest, whose new life in Manhattan is elaborately arranged to conceal a devastating secret.
In a story that stretches from the Upper West Side to a village on the coast of Ireland, Maggie O’Farrell explores the mysteries that inhere within families, and reveals the fault lines over which we build our lives. Instructions for a Heatwave weaves an unforgettable narrative of a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are.
A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip by Kevin Brockmeier - Retail Value $15 (On Amazon for $12.34)
Book Summary from Amazon:
At age twelve, Kevin Brockmeier is ready to become a different person: not the boy he has always been—the one who cries too easily and laughs too easily, who lives in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes—but someone else altogether.
Over the course of one school year—seventh grade—he sets out in search of himself. Along the way, he happens into his first kiss at a church party, struggles to understand why his old friends tease him at the lunch table, becomes the talk of the entire school thanks to his Halloween costume, and booby-traps his lunch to deter a thief.
With the same deep feeling and oddly dreamlike precision that are the hallmarks of his fiction, the acclaimed novelist now explores the dream of his own past and recovers the person he used to be.
Verdict: Using Amazon sale prices, the total value of this box comes to about $96. I think that's pretty good for a $100 book box, considering it also came with fast free shipping. (Using full retail prices, the value is about $114). One reason I really like Book Riot boxes, (and put value in their curation), is that they send books I normally wouldn't come across, and help me get out of my reading comfort zone. In their Best of 2014 box, they included a graphic novel - which I really liked - so I'm happy to see another one in this box.
What do you think of the Book Riot Surprise Beach Reads Box?
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