Book of the Month Subscription Review + 50% Off – Dec 2015

Book of the Month is a monthly book subscription box. Each month, 5 curators pick out their favorite new hardcover books, and you can choose which one you want to receive on the first of the month.

They are currently having an amazing deal on 3-month subscriptions (deal details below), so I had to sign up. (Plus I love book subscriptions so I probably would have signed up for this one with or without a deal!)

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

The Subscription Box: Book of the Month

The Cost: $16.99 a month ($8.99 a month with 12-month subscription).

COUPON: Limited Time Only! Use code SUNNY5 to get your first book for just $9.99!

The Product: Subscribers get to pick from a selection of hardcover books each month.

Ships to: US Only

Check out all of my Book of the Month reviews!

Keep Track of Your Subscriptions: Add this box to your subscription list or wish list!

For December, subscribers picked from the following 5 books:

This month I decided to go with:

Named one of the most anticipated novels of the year by New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly,Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Publishers Weekly, The Huffington Post, and more. From New York Times and internationally bestselling author Isabel Allende, an exquisitely crafted love story and multigenerational epic that sweeps from San Francisco in the present-day to Poland and the United States during the Second World War.

In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco’s parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family’s Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family—like thousands of other Japanese Americans—are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.Decades later, Alma is nearing the end of her long and eventful life. Irina Bazili, a care worker struggling to come to terms with her own troubled past, meets the elderly woman and her grandson, Seth, at San Francisco’s charmingly eccentric Lark House nursing home. As Irina and Seth forge a friendship, they become intrigued by a series of mysterious gifts and letters sent to Alma, eventually learning about Ichimei and this extraordinary secret passion that has endured for nearly seventy years.

Sweeping through time and spanning generations and continents, The Japanese Lover explores questions of identity, abandonment, redemption, and the unknowable impact of fate on our lives. Written with the same attention to historical detail and keen understanding of her characters that Isabel Allende has been known for since her landmark first novel The House of the Spirits, The Japanese Lover is a profoundly moving tribute to the constancy of the human heart in a world of unceasing change.

There wasn’t a book that jumped out at me as “the one” this month, so I went with the approach of going with the book that had the best reviews on Amazon. I think that will work for me this month – I just re-read the summary of the book, and I’m excited to start it.

And each book is selected by a judge – this book comes with a letter from judge Bill Goldstein.

Verdict:  I’m also very pleased with the value of my Book of the Month subscription so far – I still can’t believe I got this book for only $6.99!

What do you think of the Book of the Month subscription? Which box did you pick this month? (FYI – Book of the Month has extended the selection window for the December boxes. You can sign up for a subscription and start with a December book selection, now through 12/15.