Book Subscription Box Guide

Subscription boxes are everywhere these days: you can subscribe to have your wardrobe picked out for you, get shaving supplies, or even a monthly supply of condoms if you’re an extremely popular person. But, as a reader, I’m most excited about book subscription boxes! What I like about boxes like this is that it feels like you’re opening a present, instead of just spending more money on books (even though in reality you’re spending money on books). Plus, sometimes the boxes have exclusive content or are personalized in some way. So I thought I’d share with you a few options, and give the run-down on ones that I’ve tried.

Review: A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev

Title: A Bollywood Affair

Author: Sonali Dev

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Release Date: October 2014

Rating: 2/5 Stars

 

I always feel terrible about giving a book less than three stars, because I have the utmost respect for writers and how difficult it is to write a book in the first place. However, I still have to be honest and explain my reasoning for the low rating, because there are plenty of readers who have given this book four or five stars. I am just simply not one of them. 

In A Bollywood Affair, 24-year-old Mili has just arrived in the U.S. from India where she is pursuing some kind of advanced social work degree. Her past is pretty interesting: Mili was married off at age 4 during a village wedding ceremony (that may or may not have been legal) to Virat, whose family ended up fleeing the village and she hasn’t seen him since the wedding day. She’s been living as a married woman since then, which means she hasn’t had any romantic relationships with any other men but she has had the freedom to pursue her education. Meanwhile, Virat has a half-brother named Samir who is a film director and screenwriter, who eventually meets up with Mili in the U.S. when he aims to have her sign divorce papers when Virat, who has since remarried and is expecting a child, ends up in the hospital. Virat had just received legal papers, allegedly from Mili, aiming to inherit his property if he died. As you can see, the premise is interesting and there could have been a lot of good stuff happening in this book. It just all kind of fell apart for me as the story progressed.

I’ll start off with the good: the writing itself. I believe this was Dev’s first book, and the writing is actually really excellent. There are some turns of phrase and some beautiful imagery that she crafted in A Bollywood Affair, and the story definitely made me hungry for Indian food (the characters discuss food quite a bit). Also, the initial twist to the story is a compelling one: a woman thinks of herself as married and lives her life assuming that her husband will come back to her eventually, and in the meantime enjoys rights and privileges she may not have had she been a single woman growing up in her village. She was able to be educated, live in the city, and have a job that she was passionate about. Mili could have been a strong character, but unfortunately, her characterization was a bit off to me.

First of all, the world of the characters is strikingly misogynistic, which is something I don’t care for in my romance novels. Mili slut shames other women, herself, and, despite all her accomplishments, longs to be a perfect wife. Female characters besides Mili who rebel against patriarchal norms are characterized as obnoxious and oversexed (her roommate and ‘best friend’, Rhidi), and are contrasted with the pure, chaste Mili. Mili is characterized as being ‘not like other women’, which implies that there is something wrong with women in general and she happens to be the special goddess who makes love to her food but is a pure virgin, who has a perfect, tiny body despite never exercising and living off of chocolate bars, and who is so true to a husband she met once as a four-year-old that a man even looking at her makes her feel impure. That is, until she meets Samir, who looks like a Bollywood star but can cook like an Indian grandma. As soon as Samir is introduced, Mili is completely reliant on him: she's injured, so he helps her get around, she has no food, so he buys her groceries, he even pays off her boss so that she doesn't have to work! She loses so much agency as soon as Samir enters her life.

Don’t even get me started on Samir himself. I hated Samir so much, words nearly fail me. First of all, I disliked the way he was described. Samir is half-white and half-Indian, but for some reason he is constantly described as having ‘marble-white skin’ and ‘dark gold hair’. I cannot for the life of me picture someone who looks like that, so I kind of just pictured him looking like the guy from Powder with a Jamie Lannister wig on, which made it difficult to understand why everyone thought he was a mega babe. It just seemed like a way to get out of having a POC hero that actually, you know, had a little color in his skin. I’m half Filipino and half white, which is not dissimilar to some half-Indian skin tones (I get mistaken for being Indian quite a bit actually), and let me tell you what color my skin not comparable to: freaking marble! I understand that quite a few Asian countries, the Philippines included, are fixated on white skin being some kind of beauty standard, but as a romance author, why reinforce that? Why can’t Samir have a little melanin and still be considered handsome? It really irked me. Another thing I hated about Samir, was that he instantly felt the need to protect Mili, punch any guy who looked at her, and, oh yeah, he totally lied to her right off the start and caused a lot of the drama that occurred later on with this idiotic lie. Instead of explaining who he was and how he knew her right off the bat, he pretended to be some random boy whose family was from her village, gained her trust, and just kept up this act pretty much for the entire book. Meanwhile, his ‘manliness’ just made me roll my eyes: the constant references to him being a big, manly man with size fourteen feet and Mili being so petite with her size four feet she can barely walk around like a normal human being, were just more than I could take. There was even an instance where he can’t even say the word ‘gay’, as if he is afraid that will somehow push him over into the gay spectrum.

Suffice it to say, this book just did not speak to me. I dislike the whitewashing of the hero, women being shamed for their sexuality, hetero normative manliness prowling around, and relationships built on a false premise. Whenever there was a moment that I enjoyed or a character interaction that helped me warm up to the story, something completely misogynist would occur. Clearly, this was just not the romance for me. I do think Sonali Dev is a good writer, however, and I hope that maybe her subsequent books after this one are more up my alley, because I have heard good things about them.

January Reading Re-Cap

I started off the New Year excited to dive into my well-planned TBR list and start chipping away at reading challenges like a boss. However, being a WOC in 2017 in the U.S. has given me quite a bit of anxiety which impacted my reading life in unexpected ways. Every day since he-who-shall-not-be-named became our official leader, I’ve woken up to one horrific story after another. I’ve been scrambling to donate to organizations that I support and to stay up-to-date with current events. This has definitely taken away my precious reading time, but I’ve also been craving different sorts of reads all together. Usually I’m fine reading brutal books, but I’ve found this year I have struggled reading books about tyrannical governments that feature a lot of violence. It’s just too real, and I’ve preferred reading romance, WOC authors writing POC protagonists, and historical books taking place in different countries. Plus, a lot of nostalgia reading (hello, Flashback Reads). Below, a quick recap of what I read in January.

Review: Insert Groom Here by K.M. Jackson

Title: Insert Groom Here
Author: K.M. Jackson
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: December 2016
Rating: 4/5 Stars

Confession: I love reality dating shows. Specifically, I'm talking about The Bachelor and its' many spin-offs. I live for the cheesy catch phrases, the over the top dates, and, of course, the interpersonal drama. So I was ready to take a break from all of the intense and enraging news blowing up my Twitter feed after the ascension of a sentient Cheeto, and read some contemporary romance inspired by reality TV.

Insert Groom Here follows Eva, a successful, accomplished, driven young woman who wins the wedding of her dreams on live TV. Her potential groom, however, throws a wrench in the plan when he decides to break the engagement, on air, without any warning. The usually composed Eva loses her shit and, incensed by the live broadcast of embarrassment and her failed relationship, ends up getting physical with Aiden Walker, son of the head of the TV network. Of course, Aiden is hot, a playboy, and finds Eva's assault of him amusing instead of terrifying, and luckily Eva's character improves from this first impression. From there, Aiden campaigns to get Eva her own dating special to find Mr. Right, whom she will have to marry on live TV. Due to her overly-involved PR firm-running mother, Eva agrees if only to get some better publicity to make up for her on screen meltdown. The book follows Eva's string of dates as well as her love-hate relationship with Aiden Walker.

First, I have to say that, despite me not being into her kneeing someone in the balls in the beginning of the book (violence is never the answer), by the end of this book, I was ride or die for Eva. She is everything! She doesn't let herself get pushed around by the TV producers, she doesn't try to change who she is for her suitors, and she knows when to put someone in their place (verbally, she doesn't get violent again after the first meeting with Aiden). When one of her dates tells her that he loves "breaking" women (like a horse, essentially) and tries to figure out if she's one of the ladies who swooned for Christian Grey in 50 Shades, Eva's response is pretty amazing: "for the record, I'm fine just as I am and don't need a man like you to bring out any hidden depths. And side note, just because there was a popular book that eluded shades of bondage, not every woman fantasizes about being broken. It's called fiction for a reason." Yassss!!! She's just the best. Another favorite line: "Just as she thought, here was another man thinking he could somehow change her life with the magic of what he had between his legs."

Which brings me to Aiden, the love interest. Aiden's whole hang up is that Eva is the talent, and it would be unprofessional to start something with her, and he hates being 'tied down' (of course) and can't wait to get back to traveling and investigative reporting once his punishment of working for his dad is over. Even though he is cast as a womanizer, Aiden is extremely respectful of Eva's feelings and tries to be clear with setting boundaries. The tension between Aiden and Eva is very well done, and they both had quite a bit to learn from one another. I love the sort of rivals to lovers trope in romance, so I was definitely cheering for them to get together in the end, especially since Eva's dates were painfully dull.

Overall, this book was a lot of fun and featured some excellent critiques of the double standards that men and women face when it comes to marriage. Eva was also an extremely confident main character, which is always a lot more fun to read about than a doormat, and Aiden was a good combination of playboy and respectable, woke dude. If you like your romance with a healthy dose of humor and self-awareness, this is an excellent pick.

Flashback Reads: The Baby-Sitters Club

As a 30-something woman who grew up in middle class America, it should come as no surprise that my favorite books growing up were The Baby-sitters Club books. I read them in elementary school and I made it until the point when Abby was introduced and I was like “I just don’t know you anymore, Baby-sitters Club” and I happily moved on to California Diaries. Plus, in California Diaries, there were super dramatic issues like eating disorders and abusive relationships, and since I loved drama as a tween, I was all about it. 

Anyway, like many sane people, I listen to and love the podcast The Babysitters-Club Club, and it inspired me to dig up some of my old BSC books and re-read them along with the show. I didn’t have them all in sequential order anymore (I think my mom donated them to the library, which has instilled a bitterness in me that will never dissipate), but still had a few essentials and I may have secretly ordered a few (original covers only!) on Amazon to fill in some gaps. And, after re-reading about ten last year and a few more in 2017, I was so happy that they held up! Sure, there are some cringe-worthy descriptions that would hopefully not fly in contemporary YA and middle grade, like describing the only Asian character as “exotic”. Also the casual racism in Stoneybrook, CT that Jessi Ramsay and her family encounter is horrifying, and Mallory's little sister Claire has apparently only seen African-American people when they come to clean her house which is...unsettling, to say the least.

Although, the Ann M. Martin-penned books were written during a time when pop culture representation of African-Americans and Asian-Americans was really terrible (Long Duk Dong, anyone?), so I think the goal was to expose kids to some more positive representations of POC that were their age. Maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part because I hold these books in such high regard, so despite those missteps and the horrifying outfits that the girls wear and describe in minute detail, the BSC books are still extremely entertaining, well-written, and memorable. I was surprised when I remembered the names of random pets that the girls or their charges own, or that I distinctly remembered specific passages and was transported to being in fourth grade and reading those same lines and connecting with them. So far, I’ve re-read books between book #4 Mary Anne Saves the Day and book #14 Hello, Mallory, then jumped ahead to book #29 Mallory and the Missing Diary because my other childhood books in between were missing. Below, a few impressions of the BSC members 20 years later in no particular order. Note: if you’ve never read these books, I’m sorry because I don’t explain who any of these characters are because how dare you.

Review: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

Title: The Bear and the Nightingale
Author: Katherine Arden
Genre: Historical/Fantasy
Release Date: January 2017
Rating: 5/5 Stars 

One of my favorite areas of study when working on my history undergrad was medieval Russia. Russia has a medieval period so unlike the rest of Europe, having been settled largely by Scandinavian invaders who took over the land from the native Slavic population. Meanwhile, influences from the Byzantine Empire and the Mongols permeate throughout medieval Russian culture. Plus, the political system of sons inheriting the title of Grand Prince, and the super complicated familial murders that occurred because of this system, make it a fascinating area of study. Russian folklore, meanwhile, is full of dark, creepy creatures that are at home in the wintery landscape. Debut novel The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden manages to capture this world, wavering between the real and the unreal, as well as creating memorable, likeable characters and a compelling plotline.

Taking place during the reign of Ivan II, the Fair (1353 - 1359) and his subsequent death, this story follows the lives of a lord’s family living on a remote estate surrounded by forest. Pyotr, the patriarch of the family, married Marina, a half sister of Ivan II, whose mother was a mysterious but beautiful child of the woods. They have a healthy brood of children (three sons and a girl) when the youngest member of the family, Vasilisa, or Vasya, is born. Marina longs for a magical daughter to live in her mother’s image, and claims that Vasya is that promised daughter. Pyotr would prefer to have his wife rather than a magical daughter, but he’s a good father and dedicated to his family so he supports Marina’s decision to have this baby even if it risks her life. From there, Arden weaves a spellbinding tale following Vasya throughout her girlhood into womanhood, as her connection with the magic of the land grows alongside the religious fervor building in the nearby village.

Much of the magic throughout the book will be familiar to readers of folklore and fairy tales, but you may encounter new words for some of these supernatural creatures. There are rusalkas, forest guardian spirits, vampires, and a cast of spirits of the hearth that guard homes and stables. These creatures live in an invisible plane that most mortals cannot see, unless you are born with the sign. Surprise, surprise, our heroine possesses the sight, but she’s not the only one, and not all possessors of this gift view it as a positive power. The magic in Vasya’s world feels very real, making this book border on fantasy and magical realism in my reading. The idea of magic in the medieval world is a fascinating one; most believed it to be real, an explanation for what could not be seen, and a companion to the answers provided by Christianity.

Throughout the book, we grow up with Vasya as she faces different challenges, and she is supported by her brother Alyosha, and the magical spirits that she defends. Since Vasya is a girl throughout most of the book, I've seen some call this Young Adult but I don't think it really falls into that category at all. I don’t want to explain too much about the plot in order to avoid spoilers, but the overall feeling this book gave me was hands-down five stars. The writing casts a spell over the reader, compelling you to keep turning the pages in order to stay in this beautifully rendered world. When I came to the end of the book, I almost didn’t have any words and it took me a little while to formulate my review. I think that this would appeal to readers of magical realism works, like The Night Circus, as well as historical fiction lovers. It also reminded me a bit of The Book of Speculation, which also features Eastern European folklore, but I thought that this book executed its plot much better. A wonderful new release to start of 2017!

Review: Dearest Clementine by Lex Martin

Title: Dearest Clementine
Author: Lex Martin
Genre: Contemporary Romance/New Adult
Release Date: July 2015
Rating: 4/5 stars

In Dearest Clementine, college student Clementine Avery is dealing with a lot as she turns twenty-one. A creative writing major and writer, Clementine was published her freshman year after writing a YA novel inspired by a past romance, and is struggling to follow up with a new novel. Meanwhile, she accidentally signed up for a course in Romance Novel Writing instead of Young Adult Novel Writing, and her issues with love and intimacy make this class a struggle for her. It doesn't help that her wealthy mother cut her off and she's working as hard as she can to cover her expensive college tuition, take care of her anxiety, and heal from past traumas. Luckily, she has two close friends, Harper and Jenna, and a new roommate, Dani, to support her.

To protect herself from experiencing the heartbreak of her past, Clementine is determined not to date and hides behind a bitchy (but hilarious) exterior. She doesn't give any guy the time of day, until she meets handsome journalism major Gavin. With the urging of her friends and the support of Gavin, Clementine learns how to move on from her past, deal with forgiveness, and determine what type of person she wants to be. There is quite a bit of drama in this book, but there's just enough comedy not to make the reading experience feel too heavy, allowing the story to be a quick and engaging read.

I really enjoyed how, unlike in some romances, the introduction of a super hot guy (with, we can assume, a magical penis) is all it takes to heal the broken heroine and carry her into her happily ever after. Instead, Gavin is simply supportive and empathetic, and he's not the only source of support for Clementine. She has a flawed twin brother who messes up but means well, three awesome girlfriends, and she even learns to befriend people she viewed as her enemies before. She also understands that sometimes professional help is necessary and knows when it's time to contact a therapist. Clementine suffers from anxiety and a home life that was less than nurturing, and therapy and self care are a big part of her recovery.

The romance in this book was also really well-done. It's kind of a slow burn, because Clementine has a lot of work to do on herself before she's ready to be in a relationship. Gavin, meanwhile, is part of that coveted class of "book boyfriends" (which is referenced in this book, and that is awesome), who are handsome, smart, understanding, sensitive, and have killer abs to top it off. He and Clementine have great banter back and forth, and he appreciates in her what others may view as flaws, plus he's not afraid of her constant state of resting bitchface in the beginning of the book, so he's got some conviction. This was definitely a fun, well-written New Adult read, and starts off a series of standalone books set in this world.