Book of the Month YA Review September 2019
Book of the Month YA is a monthly book subscription box. Every month they release 5 new books which they have narrowed down from hundreds of new releases (so you don’t have to). Books are announced on the first of the month, and members have six days to decide which book they would like to receive. Monthly subscriptions include one book, but members can purchase up to two additional books each month for $9.99 per title. They kindly sent me this box for review.
Book of the Month YA is still fairly new. They only started shipping a couple months ago but they are already at the top of my list when it comes to book and/or teen subscriptions. I LOVE that BOTM added a YA box to their subscription offering. I myself am a fan of YA books, but I also love that they are catering to a younger group. My niece has already called dibs on a few of the books from the past couple boxes.
Subscription Details
How Book of the Month YA works:
1. New selections are announced on the 1st of the month: The BOTM team selects 5 new books each month, one of which is included in your membership.
2. Choose your Book of the Month YA by the 6th: Visit the site to select your Book of the Month, or leave it up to them and they will choose one for you.
3. Read, react and discuss with other members: All books ship on the same day. Return to the site to share and discuss with other members.
Here’s a closer look at the Book of the Month YA selections for September……
The Girl the Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young
For as long as she can remember, Tova has lived among the Svell, the people who found her washed ashore as a child and use her for her gift as a Truthtongue. Her own home and clan are long-faded memories, but the sacred symbols and staves inked over every inch of her skin mark her as one who can cast the rune stones and see into the future. She has found a fragile place among those who fear her, but when two clans to the east bury their age-old blood feud and join together as one, her world is dangerously close to collapse.
For the first time in generations, the leaders of the Svell are divided. Should they maintain peace or go to war with the allied clans to protect their newfound power? And when their chieftain looks to Tova to cast the stones, she sets into motion a series of events that will not only change the landscape of the mainland forever but will give her something she believed she could never have again—a home.
Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi
After a year of college, Pablo is working at his local twenty-four-hour deli, selling overpriced snacks to brownstone yuppies. He’s dodging calls from the student loan office and he has no idea what his next move is.
Leanna Smart’s life so far has been nothing but success. Age eight: Disney Mouseketeer; Age fifteen: first #1 single on the US pop chart; Age seventeen, *tenth* #1 single; and now, at Age nineteen…life is a queasy blur of private planes, weird hotel rooms, and strangers asking for selfies on the street.
When Leanna and Pab randomly meet at 4:00 a.m. in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn, they both know they can’t be together forever. So, they keep things on the down-low and off Instagram for as long as they can. But it takes about three seconds before the world finds out…
Frankly in Love by David Yoon
High school senior Frank Li is a Limbo–his term for Korean-American kids who find themselves caught between their parents’ traditional expectations and their own Southern California upbringing. His parents have one rule when it comes to romance–“Date Korean”–which proves complicated when Frank falls for Brit Means, who is smart, beautiful–and white. Fellow Limbo Joy Song is in a similar predicament, and so they make a pact: they’ll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom. Frank thinks it’s the perfect plan, but in the end, Frank and Joy’s fake-dating maneuver leaves him wondering if he ever really understood love–or himself–at all.
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus
Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she’s going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor’s daughter. Audre’s grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets of her own) tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won’t lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. “America have dey spirits too, believe me,” she tells Audre.
Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels–about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness that’s plagued her all summer. Mabel’s reverie is cut short when her father announces that his best friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner.
Mabel quickly falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But their romance takes a turn when test results reveal exactly why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer and suddenly it’s Audre who is caring for Mabel as she faces a deeply uncertain future.
Junauda Petrus’s debut brilliantly captures the distinctly lush and lyrical voices of Mabel and Audre as they conjure a love that is stronger than hatred, prison, and death and as vast as the blackness between the stars.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.
Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.
Book of the Month YA Review September 2019 – Final Thoughts
My September Book of the Month YA arrived very late this month. I typically receive it at the beginning of the month giving me time to read one (maybe two) of the monthly selections. Therefore, I haven’t had time to read any of the September YA books and I’m not sure if I will before my October box arrives. I already have my eye on one of the books from the October selection. But….if I was to start a book from my September box I think it would be Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi. I love the idea of a hidden romance, especially when it occurs between two people with totally different lives. That aspect of it intrigues me enough to try to make the time to read it before my October box arrives.
-AYOB