Book People Trust Fall Subscription Box Review – Jan 2015

Thanks to the wonderful suggestions from My Subscription Addiction readers, I have become obsessed with book subscription boxes! Trust Fall is a relatively new subscription box from Book People. Every quarter they send you a signed, first edition copy of a debut or break out book, plus a few extra items.

My Subscription Addiction pays for this subscription. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes).

The Subscription Box: Trust Fall (ships once a quarter)

The Cost: $39.95 per quarter (or $35 a quarter if you pay the $140 annual cost up front).

The Products: “We’ll send you four debut or break-out books throughout the year that we absolutely do not want you to miss. You’ll also receive a couple of extra goodies in your surprise package as a thank you for taking a chance with us. If you don’t like the book, you can return it for a full refund and keep the extra gifts.”

The box comes with a letter detailing the items included and a little background on the book selected.

Descent by Tim Johnston - Retail Value $25.95 (Out of stock on Amazon for $20.62)

I listed the retail value of the book, but that's probably not a fair representation of the value since this is a signed first edition:

The synopsis of Descent from Amazon:

The Rocky Mountains have cast their spell over the Courtlands, a young family from the plains taking a last summer vacation before their daughter begins college. For eighteen-year-old Caitlin, the mountains loom as the ultimate test of her runner’s heart, while her parents hope that so much beauty, so much grandeur, will somehow repair a damaged marriage. But when Caitlin and her younger brother, Sean, go out for an early morning run and only Sean returns, the mountains become as terrifying as they are majestic, as suddenly this family find themselves living the kind of nightmare they’ve only read about in headlines
or seen on TV.

As their world comes undone, the Courtlands are drawn into a vortex of dread and recrimination.Why weren’t they more careful? What has happened to their daughter? Is she alive? Will they ever know? Caitlin’s disappearance, all the more devastating for its mystery, is the beginning of the family’s harrowing journey down increasingly divergent and solitary paths until all that continues to bind them together are the questions they can never bring themselves to ask: At what point does a family stop searching? At what point will a girl stop fighting for her life?

Written with a precision that captures every emotion, every moment of fear, as each member of the family searches for answers, Descent is a perfectly crafted thriller that races like an avalanche toward its heart-pounding conclusion, and heralds the arrival of a master storyteller.

Taza Chocolate in Chipotle Chili - Value $5

The book also came with some chocolate (gluten and dairy free!), an essay from Tim Johnston on how he came to write Descent, and a Q&A about the book. (I'm waiting to read these until after I read the book).

Algonquin Reader Volume 4 Issue 1 - Value ?

Irish Girl Stories by Tim Johnston - Retail Value $12.95 (Out of stock on Amazon for $11.27)

The Algonquin Reader is a collection of excerpts from upcoming Algonquin books. (The publisher of Descent).

I also really like that they included one of Tim Johnston's earlier works - it gets amazing reviews. Here's the synopsis from Amazon:

Inside Tim Johnston's Irish Girl (winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction) readers will find spellbinding stories of loss, absence, and the devastating effects of chance—of what happens when the unthinkable bad luck of other people, of other towns, becomes our bad luck, our town. Taut, lucid, and engrossing, provocative and dark—and often darkly funny—these stories have much to offer the lover of literary  fiction as well as the reader who just loves a great story.

Verdict: I'm really happy with my first Trust Fall shipment. I was planning on buying Descent and then I saw it was out of stock in my Amazon cart. Now I'm glad Amazon is out of stock - otherwise this would be a duplicate copy for me! I also was surprised to see they included a second book with this box.

The value is a little difficult to nail down with this box since they've included very thoughtful exclusives an additions to the book. From a purely retail value perspective, it would cost me $37 to get these items (by sale prices on Amazon), and I paid $35 for this box (with the annual subscription), so I'm pleased. Of course, that's not the only value to the box, and I really appreciate the thought and curation that went into this box. It's also great to get a signed book!

What do you think of the January Trust Fall box?