Unboxing: Review of Once Upon A Book Club Adult Fiction March 2019

With all unboxings my intention is to help you determine if the box is worth your money. I go through each product included in the box first and assign a rating at the end. Each item is rated out of 3: usefulness, quality, and do I personally enjoy it? Often I will give bonus points for extra items/ exceptional covers/ exceptional pins … etc. 

Once Upon a Book Club is a unique book subscription service in which the goodies/gifts are pulled directly from the book … you are supposed to wait until certain marked pages to open the corresponding gift.

Supposed to.

I’m not patient that way…

So here is the unboxing of the March 2019 Adult fiction box.

The book pick of the month is The Beautiful Strangers by Camille Di Maio. This softcover novel comes with a quote pulled from the story and printed on good quality cardstock. The pull quote this month is: “A wise girl knows her limits but a smart girl knows she has none.” – Marilyn Monroe. The book also comes with a signed book plate.

The first item, from page 72, is a pair of cat eye sunglasses with fake pearl details. Being a glasses wearing gal these are quite useless to me – I am surprised that subscription boxes continue to include sunglasses being that a good majority of people wear glasses … but … yes.

The next gift is found on page 121. This is an interesting hanging picture/postcard frame and comes with a re-printed fake picture relevant to the book. (Note the Court of Mist and Fury quote card is not included but put in to give a general idea of what it looks like with an image in the frame).

The next item is on page 170. This is a short sleeved, brightly patterned belted kimono. It is quite long, about calf length, and is one size fits all.

The last gift is on page 285. This is simply a printed letter replication of a letter in the book placed in an envelope.

Lastly the paper goodies included a coupon to the bookish shop, an excerpt announcement of an upcoming novel and a read along/discussion dates pamphlet.

Overall Rating: D

• Sunglasses 1/3: It bugs me when subscription boxes include sunglasses, as any glasses wearer can agree with. Not only that, but these are quite cheap feeling, uncomfortable and mine were bent.

• Picture Frame + Postcard: 3/3: This is a neat item – although it took me a minute to figure it out! I use it to hang quote cards and prints from subscription boxes. I really like it!

• Kimono: 2/3: It is really pretty … but doesn’t feel very nice. I was actually excited by this item at first, thinking I’d wear it as a spring/summer weight housecoat. But it is awfully heavy, itchy polyester and just doesn’t feel nice to wear.

• Letter 0/3:  Ok, so I really hate to even call this a gift. It is simply a computer print out of the letter from the book … so, pretty useless in my opinion.

Once Upon A Bookclub costs me about $70 once shipping and conversion is factored in. For a $15 book, a computer print out letter, cheap sunglasses, an itchy kimono and a picture frame … I think you can see why the rating is quite low. I think the concept is so cool and love supporting independent businesses and truly hate giving negative reviews … but I cannot say there is value for your money here.