Book of the Month is a monthly book subscription box. Each month, five curators pick out their favorite new hardcover books, and you can choose which one you want to receive on the first of the month for $17.99/month. You can also add up to two additional books for only $9.99 each. (This box was named one of the best subscriptions for avid readers in the 2024 Subscription Box Awards.)
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My BOTM Pick for May: The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean, Hardcover Retail Value $22.35
Back of Book Summary:
Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she gets the call that Ellie Black, a girl who disappeared years earlier, has resurfaced in the woods of Washington state—but Ellie’s reappearance leaves Chelsey with more questions than answers.
It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work.
Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State.
But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken—and who, unlike Ellie, might never return.
My Summary
The question of what happened to Elizabeth "Ellie" Black is one that's haunted Detective Chelsey Calhoun for two years — ever since the teenager left a motel room filled with partying teens to go to the bathroom and disappeared into thin air. It was Calhoun's first case as a detective, and the trail has long since run cold.
But when a malnourished Ellie, covered in dirt and blood, sensitive to light, and scared of human touch emerges from the Washington woods, Calhoun's two-year-old cold case is far from solved. The brash teenager who'd once stolen her sister's ID, bought out half a liquor store, rented a motel room, and charged her classmates $20 a pop to party just so she could buy herself a new cellphone is gone.
In her place is a shell of the Ellie friends and family once described to police. In her place is an abuse victim who Calhoun finds unwillingly — or simply too afraid — to provide any detail about who kidnapped her or what has happened in the two years since she left that motel room.
A female in the male-dominated world of police work and a Japanese American in a predominantly white small town, Calhoun is already grappling with guilt over the loss of her own sister who died at 15 more than a decade prior, and a workplace where sexism and racism run rampant. Now she's struggling to get justice for Ellie without further traumatizing a fragile teenager.
The Verdict
A missing girl appears two years after disappearing from a teen rager. A young detective lives in the shadow of her sister's death more than a decade ago.
Both are well-worn thriller tropes, but in New York Times bestseller Emiko Jean's deft hands, The Return of Ellie Black renders the stories of both missing girl Ellie Black and detective Chelsey Calhoun as incredibly human.
Like her character Chelsey, Jean is Japanese American and also grew up in a predominantly white town in the Pacific Northwest. She draws on her background to create a detective whose own story is as compelling as the mystery that keeps you turning the page of the book. Chelsey is the daughter of the former police chief, raised to join the force, and yet she's as much an outsider at work as she was growing up as the adopted Japanese American daughter in a white family with a white sister — her parents' biological child.
Layering in themes of racism in a small town and sexism on the police force, along with adoption and the death of a sister makes for a detective story that's as much about the trauma of the one searching for answers as it is for the traditional victim.
Meanwhile Ellie is the classic problem child, the one who fought with her parents shortly before disappearing, and Jean chooses to shift perspectives often in her novel, forcing us to consider both family dysfunction as parents Kat and Jimmy grapple with their choices both as parents and as partners to one another, the challenges of parenting teenagers and the ways in which society treats its victims.
Value — Was This Box Worth It?
May offered up a rich list of choices on the BOTM Club list of book picks, from Rachel Khong's Real Americans to debut author Kaliane Bradley's sci-fi novel The Ministry of Time, but The Return of Ellie Black stood out immediately. After all, Emiko Jean has already proven herself a master of young adult and adult fiction, so her first foray into psychological thrillers was intriguing.
And let's face it — it's hard to go wrong with a Book of the Month Club pick that has gotten the thumbs up from Stephen King himself!
As for the overall dollar value, you'll save a few dollars with this pick — BOTM Club starts at $17.99, depending on your chosen subscription, and this book is listed at $22.35 over on Amazon.
Of course, the first month of a subscription is $9.99 with free shipping, so if this is your entree to a Book of the Month subscription, you come way out ahead.
The Cost: $9.99 + free shipping (This price is only for your first month).
Value Breakdown: This box costs $9.99, but the book I chose will retail as hardcover for $22.35, which means a discount of more than $12. (Remember...this is first month only). Even if you are looking at the $17.99 cost for one of the later months of your overall subscription, you're still saving $5.
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To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this book if you sign up today? Yes! But you will need to order it as an add-on.
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