Book People Trust Fall Subscription Box Review – March 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.”

Check out all of my Trust Fall reviews!

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

Barefoot Dogs: Stories by Antonio Ruiz-Camacho – Retail Value $23, (On Amazon for $17.37)

This is a signed copy, so while I’m including the value of the hardcover book, I don’t think it covers the whole value for some. Here is the signature page:

The book summary from Amazon:

An unforgettable debut of linked stories that follow the members and retinue of a wealthy Mexican family forced into exile after the patriarch is kidnapped.

On an unremarkable night, José Victoriano Arteaga—the head of a thriving Mexico City family—vanishes on his way home from work. The Arteagas find few answers; the full truth of what happened to Arteaga is lost to the shadows of Mexico’s vast and desperate underworld, a place of rampant violence and kidnappings, and government corruption. But soon packages arrive to the family house, offering horrifying clues.

Fear, guilt, and the prospect of financial ruination fracture the once-proud family and scatter them across the globe, yet delicate threads still hold them together: in a swimming pool in Palo Alto, Arteaga’s young grandson struggles to make sense of the grief that has hobbled his family; in Mexico City, Arteaga’s mistress alternates between rage and heartbreak as she waits, in growing panic, for her lover’s return; in Austin, the Arteagas’ housekeeper tries to piece together a second life in an alienating and demeaning new land; in Madrid, Arteaga’s son takes his ailing dog through the hot and unforgiving streets, in search of his father’s ghost.

Multiple award-winning author Antonio Ruiz-Camacho offers an exquisite and intimate evocation of the loneliness, love, hope, and fear that can bind a family even as unspeakable violence tears it apart. “A straight-on jab to the soul” (Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk),Barefoot Dogs is a heartfelt elegy to the stolen innocence of every family struck by tragedy. This is urgent and vital fiction.

The box also comes with a Q&A fold-out card with the author, Antonio Ruiz-Camacho.

War of the Encyclopaedists – Value $19?

This is an Advance Reader’s Edition of the book – it isn’t released until May 19th. I think this is such an awesome perk – if there was a subscription box that sent out Advanced Reader copies every month I would sign up immediately!

Here is the synopsis from Amazon:

In a superb, rare literary collaboration, two major new talents join their voices to tell the story of a generation at a crossroads, and a friendship that stretches over continents and crises—from the liberal arena of Boston academia to the military occupation of Iraq—in this ambitious and electrifying debut novel.

On a summer night, in the arty enclave of Capitol Hill, Seattle, best friends Mickey Montauk and Halifax Corderoy throw one last blowout party before their lives part ways. At twenty-three, they had planned to move together to Boston for graduate school, but global events have intervened: Montauk has just learned that his National Guard unit will deploy to Baghdad at the end of the summer. In the confusion of this altered future, Corderoy is faced with a moral dilemma: his girlfriend Mani has just been evicted and he must decide whether or not to abandon her when she needs him most. He turns to Montauk for help. His decision that night, and its harrowing outcome, sets in motion a year that will transform all three of them.

Months later, Corderoy and Montauk grapple with their new identities as each deals with his own muted disappointment. In Boston, Corderoy finds himself unable to play the game of intellectual one-upmanship with the ease and grace of his new roommate Tricia, a Harvard graduate student and budding human rights activist. Half a world away, in Baghdad, Montauk struggles to lead his platoon safely through an increasingly violent and irrational war. As their lives move further away from their shared dream, Corderoy and Montauk keep in touch with one another by editing a Wikipedia article about themselves: smart and funny updates that morph and deepen throughout the year, culminating in a document that is both devastatingly tragic and profoundly poetic.

Fast-moving and compulsively readable, War of the Encyclopaedists beats with the energetic pulse of idealistic youth on the threshold of adult reality. “A wise and wise-assed first novel…with sweep and heart and humor” (Mary Karr, author of Liar’s Club and Lit) it is the vital, urgent, and utterly absorbing lament of a new generation searching for meaning and hope in a fractured world.

Texas County Fair Field Notes notebooks – Value $9.95

I have enough Field Notes to last me years thanks to subscription boxes, but I love these colors.

BookPeople Coozie – Value $2?

Here is the flip side:

Verdict: I paid $35 for this box and received about $48 worth of items. (That’s counting the discounted price of Barefoot Dogs, and the discounted hardcover price of War of the Encyclopaedists). With this subscription I think there’s much more to it than the retail value, but in this case the retail value is good too!

What do you think of the March Book People Trust Fall box?