Book of the Month August 2016 Subscription Box Review #2 + Coupon

Bookspan’s Book of the Month Club is a monthly book subscription box. Each month their panel of Judges selects 5 books, which they announce on the first of the month, and members have six days to decide which book (or books) they would like to receive. All books are shipped at the same time, so members can read and participate in their discussion forums as a group. One book per month is included in the membership fee, and members can purchase up to two additional books each month for $9.99 per title. The monthly price is $16.99 per month, $11.99 per month on a year long subscription.

Here are the choices for August!

The August 2016 Book of the Month selections were:

★Circling the Sun by Paula McLain – selected by Allison Williams from the HBO comedy-drama series Girls ($17.19 on Amazon)
★ The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware – Judge: Liberty Hardy ($15.60 on Amazon)
★ Dark Matter by Blake Crouch – Judge: Maris Kreizman ($14.99 on Amazon)
★  All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood – Judge: Nina Sankovitch ($20.69 on Amazon – released on August 9, 2016!)
★ Siracusa: by Delia Ephron – Judge: Kim Hubbard ($17.04 on Amazon)
I always have a hard time selecting only one book! August would have been especially difficult to choose just one book because both Siracusa and The Woman in Cabin 10 interested me equally. Book of the Month kindly sent out all five August selections placing me in book heaven.

One book was packaged in the traditional BOTM packaging. I also selected one additional book for the first review. The other three selections will be in this post.

Here are the three selections. All five books had BOTM covers. I included the Dark Matter’s cover to show as an example of the back cover.

I gravitated to Dark Matter by Blake Crouch as the first book to read. I couldn’t wait to read this book because the plot interested me.
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch – Judge: Maris Kreizman ($14.99 on Amazon)

“Are you happy with your life?”

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human—a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of.

I found it an interesting read. I do wonder about some of the choices the characters made because it seems to go against their morals and values. I like to think there is an essence of who we are that would remain fundamentally unchanged despite the circumstances surrounding us. After all, there are heroes and champions of freedom in dire circumstances. The book made me think about who we are, and if we are following a linear path. I don’t want to write more in fear of giving the book away!

I knew this would be a difficult read. I skipped parts of the book and read about 75% of the total book including the ending. I am impressed that Book of the Month included a yet to be released book! I don’t agree with the choices that the characters made which is why I skipped parts of the book and called it a difficult read.

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood – Judge: Nina Sankovitch ($20.69 on Amazon – released on August 9, 2016!)

A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives.

As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It’s safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with one of her father’s thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold.

By the time Wavy is a teenager, her relationship with Kellen is the only tender thing in a brutal world of addicts and debauchery. When tragedy rips Wavy’s family apart, a well-meaning aunt steps in, and what is beautiful to Wavy looks ugly under the scrutiny of the outside world. A powerful novel you won’t soon forget, Bryn Greenwood’s All the Ugly and Wonderful Things challenges all we know and believe about love.

I’ll give credit to the writer that the story unfolds organically in a disastrous environment. The reader can understand how things appear to Wavy and the choices that Kellen and Wavy make even if those choices look ugly to the outside world.  It’s a hard book to read about a controversial subject that takes place in an environment that most people can’t comprehend.  It’s easy to pass judgment, yet Wavy credits her success to Kellen. Which begets the question of what would have happened to Wavy and her brother if Kellen was not a part of their lives. Sometimes there are no easy answers when living in a brutal world. I still don’t agree with their choices!

I needed something less intense after reading All the Ugly and Wonderful Things which is why I saved Circling the Sun for last.

Circling the Sun by Paula McLain – selected by Allison Williams from the HBO comedy-drama series Girls ($17.19 on Amazon)

Paula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman—Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, who as Isak Dinesen wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa.

Brought to Kenya from England as a child and then abandoned by her mother, Beryl is raised by both her father and the native Kipsigis tribe who share his estate. Her unconventional upbringing transforms Beryl into a bold young woman with a fierce love of all things wild and an inherent understanding of nature’s delicate balance. But even the wild child must grow up, and when everything Beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships.

Beryl forges her own path as a horse trainer, and her uncommon style attracts the eye of the Happy Valley set, a decadent, bohemian community of European expats who also live and love by their own set of rules. But it’s the ruggedly charismatic Denys Finch Hatton who ultimately helps Beryl navigate the uncharted territory of her own heart. The intensity of their love reveals Beryl’s truest self and her fate: to fly.

Set against the majestic landscape of early-twentieth-century Africa, McLain’s powerful tale reveals the extraordinary adventures of a woman before her time, the exhilaration of freedom and its cost, and the tenacity of the human spirit.

Circling the Sun is a contemporary historical fiction that focuses on relationships, horses, and an adventurous woman in an area where women are not to be adventurous. It’s also much more than that. It is richly detailed with strong women characters that are fully developed and will have you wondering where the line of fiction ends and reality begins. I read up on Beryl Markham’s life and accomplishments after reading the book. Feel free to watch or read  Out of Africa as prep work for the book!

Book of the Month kindly sent all five selections to me which I greatly appreciate because I love to read. I enjoyed reading different genres and being pushed outside of my comfort zone when it came to Dark Matters. The five books are well written and varied enough to appeal to most people.   Book of the Month is an inexpensive way to build up your reading library of favorite genres or to push yourself into unfamiliar genres! Skip if nothing interests you. Add on up to two extra books at $9.99 a book if you can’t decide! There’s even a discussion group. 

What book did you pick this month? Share below and let us know!

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