Unboxing: Review of OwlCrate September 2019

“Fear the Night”

September’s “Fear the Night” box was all about spooks and chills, right in time for Halloween!

I always start with my favourite item in the crate — Coffee! Specifically Bones Coffee Company coffee in “Scare-amel Corn” … a delicious caramel corn flavoured coffee. We love Bones Coffee and this delicious coffee smells just like Coffee Crisp chocolate bars.

These skull and crossbones fingerless gloves were created by OwlCrate. They are nice and soft, and I appreciate the “cute” skull design … these will be perfect for trick-or-treating! Or some other important, outdoor “adulting” activity.

Frankenstein Trinket Dish. This gorgeous trinket dish features a quote from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and was designed by Stella Bookish Art. It is quite substantial, nice quality and features a great quote from the book: “Beware for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

A second book! No faster way to get into the spookiness of the Halloween season than a horror novel! OwlCrate included a paperback of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, part of the Penguin Horror Collection.

Something Wicked This Way Comes inspired art print, illustrated by Anne Lambelet. While it is beautiful, I haven’t read the book nor is it my personal style … but it will look nice with the Halloween decorations.

The lovely, gothic, glow-in-the-dark enamel skull pin was designed by Lapels and Spells. I love that OwlCrate includes these each month with their crates. They are high quality pins and have spawned my great love for enamel pin collecting!

The book pick for September was The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones and came signed, with a gorgeous exclusive cover, letter from Emily, and bookmark from the publisher. Every month OwlCrate includes a mini magazine with author interview, vendor interview, puzzles, recommendations and more. Also included this month was an excerpt of The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh.

Overall Rating: A-

1. Coffee: 3/3

2. Fingerless Gloves: 2/3 (Quality is excellent, there just isn’t a lot of season or use for fingerless gloves here).

3. Trinket Dish: 3/3

4. Second Book: The Haunting of Hill House: 2/3 (I can see how this was an excellent addition to the box and fitting with the theme, but I just don’t like horror and will likely never read this).

5. Ray Bradbury Art Print: 2/3 (Again, another fandom I’m not a part of and it just really isn’t my style … I find art prints to be quite hit and miss in subscription boxes and are never my favourite item to receive).

It was another well curated box and such an excellent box to get this time of the year. While some of the items didn’t hit the mark for me personally (art print and horror book) – they fit the theme and the products are always of high quality. I am very excited by the book pick this month as I adored The Hearts We Sold and the enamel pin continues to be an amazing addition to these boxes.

Note on Rating: I rate each item out of 3 possible points: 1 for quality, 1 for usefulness, and 1 for if I personally liked the item/fandom. I then assign an overall letter rating for the whole box.