Book of the Month Subscription Review + Coupon – May 2016

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. You can also add up to 2 additional books for only $9.99 each.

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 (less with 3 and 12 month subscriptions)

The Product: Subscribers get to pick from a selection of hardcover books each month. Skip any month you aren’t interested in. Add up to two additional books for $9.99.

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 May, subscribers picked from the following 5 books:

I decided to go with I Let You Go. (I decided to buy an additional two books for $9.99 as well.)

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh – Retail Value $26 (On Amazon for $17.77)

Book Summary from Amazon:

On a rainy afternoon, a mother’s life is shattered as her son slips from her grip and runs into the street . . .

I Let You Go follows Jenna Gray as she moves to a ramshackle cottage on the remote Welsh coast, trying to escape the memory of the car accident that plays again and again in her mind and desperate to heal from the loss of her child and the rest of her painful past.

At the same time, the novel tracks the pair of Bristol police investigators trying to get to the bottom of this hit-and-run. As they chase down one hopeless lead after another, they find themselves as drawn to each other as they are to the frustrating, twist-filled case before them.

I decided to pick I Let You Go since I read so many reviews that described this as a book you can’t put down once you start it. I think this will be a daylight only book for me – I don’t want to find myself reading it until 3 AM!

Each book is selected by a judge, and each judge includes a brief letter on why they selected the book. Book of the Month included the wrong letter for my selection (this is the letter for Eligible).

And there’s a ring pop to celebrate Eligible, too!

Bourbon Empire – Retail Value $27.95 (On Amazon for $18.81)

Book Summary from Amazon:

Walk into a well-stocked liquor store and you’ll see countless whiskey brands, each boasting an inspiring story of independence and heritage. And yet, more than 95% of the nation’s whiskey comes from a small handful of giant companies with links to organized crime, political controversy, and a colorful history that is far different than what appears on modern labels. InBourbon Empire, Reid Mitenbuler shows how bourbon, America’s most iconic style of whiskey, and the industry surrounding it, really came to be—a saga of shrewd capitalism as well as dedicated craftsmanship.

Mitenbuler traces the big names—Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Evan Williams, and more—back to their origins, exploring bourbon’s founding myths and great successes against the backdrop of America’s economic history. Illusion is separated from reality in a tale reaching back to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, when the ideologies of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton battled to define the soul of American business. That debate continues today, punctuated along the way by Prohibition-era bootleggers, the liquor-fueled origins of NASCAR, intense consolidation driven by savvy lobbying, and a Madison Avenue plot to release five thousand parrots—trained to screech the name of a popular brand—into the nation’s bars.

Today, the whiskey business takes a new turn as a nascent craft distilling movement offers the potential to revolutionize the industry once again. But, as Mitenbuler shows, many take advantage of this excitement while employing questionable business practices, either by masquerading whiskey made elsewhere as their own or by shortcutting the proven production standards that made many historic brands great to begin with.

A tale of innovation, success, downfall, and resurrection, Bourbon Empire is an exploration of the spirit in all its unique forms, creating an indelible portrait of both American whiskey and the people who make it.

Rain A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett – Retail Value $25 (On Amazon for $13.31)

Book Summary from Amazon:

It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world’s water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain.

Cynthia Barnett’s Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with the human story of our ambition to control rain, from ancient rain dances to the 2,203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River. It offers a glimpse of our “founding forecaster,” Thomas Jefferson, who measured every drizzle long before modern meteorology. Two centuries later, rainy skies would help inspire Morrissey’s mopes and Kurt Cobain’s grunge. Rain is also a travelogue, taking readers to Scotland to tell the surprising story of the mackintosh raincoat, and to India, where villagers extract the scent of rain from the monsoon-drenched earth and turn it into perfume.

Now, after thousands of years spent praying for rain or worshiping it; burning witches at the stake to stop rain or sacrificing small children to bring it; mocking rain with irrigated agriculture and cities built in floodplains; even trying to blast rain out of the sky with mortars meant for war, humanity has finally managed to change the rain. Only not in ways we intended. As climate change upends rainfall patterns and unleashes increasingly severe storms and drought, Barnett shows rain to be a unifying force in a fractured world. Too much and not nearly enough, rain is a conversation we share, and this is a book for everyone who has ever experienced it.

Verdict:  I’m very pleased with the value of my Book of the Month subscription. The prices are better than Amazon for new hardcover releases – I don’t know how they do it! Plus I love the curated selection each month and getting to pick a book (or more than one) each month. It pushes me out of my reading comfort zone, and gets new books on my radar! And I love that you can  skip any month you aren’t interested in, and you can also buy books from previous months as add-ons for $9.99.

What do you think of the Book of the Month subscription? Which book (or books) did you pick this month?

If you haven’t signed up for Book of the Month yet, you now have until May 21st to start with the May box. 

Use coupon code MAY30 to save 30% off a 3-month subscription of Book of the Month!