This month, Illumicrate‘s mystery book box featured one of the most anticipated releases of this moment. Curious? Discover everything about it in my unboxing!

About Illumicrate

Illumicrate is one of the best known UK book boxes that ship internationally. They offer both a full box and a book-only subscription, and the books they feature are generally YA fantasy, but they also include other genres and adult books. Next to their monthly subscription, they also have special edition boxes and exclusive editions.

The teaser

This is the info we received upfront:

• A gothic tale of ghouls, mysterious doors, and a girl trying to find her place
• YA fantasy standalone
• Nonverbal main character who communicates with sign language
• Content warnings: Ableism, parental abandonment, child abuse & neglect, nightmares, implied alcoholism, blood, off page parental death, death on page, murder, knife/sword violence, strangulation, bullying, and animal deaths.

The goodies

I have to say I wasn’t that impressed by the goodies in this box, unfortunately. This first item I found was a mug inspired by Gideon the Ninth. I’ll be keeping this one as it is beautifully designed, but I have to admit I’m over bookish mugs. There’s a limit to how many you can own after all and my cupboard starts to feel crowded.

Next, I found the cushion cover inspired by Deathless. Pretty enough, I suppose, but I’m simply not that into bookish cushion covers.

I’m a bit puzzled about the next two items: a headphone case inspired by Murderbot and a keyring inspired by Howl’s Moving Castle. Why, Illumicrate, why? Both items are impractically big and I see no use case for them whatsoever. I will definitively put these up for sale (not sure who would want them though…).

Lastly, I came across a notepad inspired by Other Words for Smoke. Without a doubt the most useful item in the entire box.

The book

The featured book is Gallant by V.E. Schwab. Last year, I was completely blown away by her The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue so I couldn’t wait to discover more of her work. This beautiful edition has an exclusive redesigned cover, artwork on the endpapers, embossing on the hardback, and digitally printed edges.

I love this edition <3 it’s truly elegant. And the story holds a lot of promise too. It’s about an orphan who receives a mysterious letter of a long lost uncle, asking her to join him at his estate…which turns out to be quite the mysterious and spooky place. I originally thought it would be aimed at a younger audience, seeing that the main character is quite young, but I’m getting the impression that I was mistaken now that I’m reading it…

Edit: my review of Gallant can now be found here!