Sweet Reads Box is a subscription box service that chooses a book each month and adds items that reflect the theme of the book. This is something very much up my alley as I enjoy books, sweet things, and hot drinks. Before subscribing, as this is a pricey subscription, I decided to try out some of their discounted “buy now” boxes. I purchased 5 for $40 each + tax and shipping. The box I was most looking forward to ended up being out of stock and I was thankfully refunded the next day. Despite being “ready to ship now”, it took 3.5 weeks to ship half my order, and the shipping was not quick. I had to e-mail them again as they did not realize they had only shipped half of my order. Honestly, this experience has been appalling and based on their practices I no am longer considering subscribing to them or purchasing any more of their discounted boxes.
Sweet Reads Box Subscription Overview
Cost: $89.99 CAD + Shipping + Tax (Discounts & Free Shipping for 3-12 months)
Value: Unknown
Frequency: Monthly
Cancellation Policy: Cancel any time but if you have pre-purchased a subscription, you will be shipped the remainder of your boxes.
Payment: 1st of the month
Focus: “Each month you will receive a carefully curated box showcasing the novel of the month.” This includes a drink to set the mood and a sweet treat.
Ships From: Vaughan, Ontario
Inside the Box
I had never heard of this book and neither have any of my friends on Goodreads. Now that I’m in a book club and actually have to think about the books I read, I realized I don’t really like most of them. After reading the synopsis, this will go to the bottom of my TBR.
This is one of those items where getting an old box for cheap comes at a cost. This is a super cute calendar from I’ll Know It When I See It, but unfortunately we’re basically in September now, so only the last 4 months are of any use. That’s the price of 50% off.
In the video I say that it doesn’t come with instructions, but I did find them eventually.
I have so many reusable bags. I have bags of reusable bags. Perhaps strangely, I’ve only ever purchased one. I’ve seen huge ranges of how many times one needs to use a reusable bag to be more environmentally friendly than a disposable plastic bag, with the most being up to 20,000 times. I think it really depends on how you’re measuring the environmental impact. The 20,000 comes from organic cotton bags because the yield of cotton is less than conventional but requires the same machinery etc. Going that deep into our environmental impact seems a little ridiculous to me. Maybe this is extremely naive of me, but I would rather have one cotton bag, organic or not, than 20,000 plastic ones in my house. I feel like these studies are carried out by people who hate the idea of having to remember to bring a bag. I know several of these people.
Anyway, I didn’t need another bag, but at least it’s from Peace Collective.
Poor Tony came home once, proud that he’d bought a reusable bag from Indigo instead of a plastic one. His pride didn’t last long. On a side note: we do not take plastic bags 99% of the time, and we use plastic packaging bags as garbage bags. We thought that when our roommate moved out last November that we would finally have fewer bags. We were wrong. We are still overflowing with plastic bags from packaging. It’s absolutely nuts how much plastic is in our lives.
I’m sure this will become more relevant when I actually read the book. Apparently the author drew that. I wish I could draw well.
This is delightfully not expired. We still have some Carnation hot chocolate in the cupboard that we bought either last summer or the previous one and forgot about. We tried the expired bag that was open. It was horrendous. Don’t try expired hot chocolate. This, however, still has 7.5 months before its BB date. Yum!
In contrast, these appear to be very much expired, or at least had troubles in the warehouse or shipping. They are all melted together, and now that it’s been a few days since I opened it, the taste is a little off. I’m not really a candy-eater in the first place, so this isn’t much of a loss for me.
The season has come and gone, but it’s coming again! I know the perfect person to give this card to.
This is a cute little bookmark very much in theme with the book and Sweet Reads. The thing about magnetic bookmarks, though, is that they take effort. You can’t have too many pages in between or the magnets won’t work.
The tagline is cute: “Perfect for mulling the year over.” I’ll be honest, though, I didn’t really know what mulling spice was. Thankfully the French is more straightforward. This does not have an expiry date on it, but I’m guessing it’s better to use sooner than later.
This is a very stinky soap. Tony says he likes it, but it smells gross to me. I also don’t understand why they’re manufacturing their soap in the USA. Points off for that.
Overall Impression
They get props for using all Canadian companies to supply the goodies for this box.
I have to keep in mind that these boxes normally go for $89.99 and I bought it for $40 + tax & shipping. I do feel that it’s odd for them to ship out expired items, but what else do you do with them? Unless you particularly want this exact book and some discounted goodies to go with it, I cannot recommend buying this box.
wanderingfawn 