Welcome, friends to 2025! I hope your first week of this mathematically fun year has been treating you well. I usually spend this week trying to recover from the intensity of the holiday season. This year, that means reading everything I can get my hands on and indulging in some cozy games as well. And I’ve allowed myself a special treat – a dive into a book box from Once Upon a Book Club.
For those unfamiliar with the service, Once Upon a Book Club is a book-of-the-month service with a twist. Each month, they send you a book, along with several wrapped presents that align with moments in the story. The book has specific post-its that alert you when it’s time to open a specific present. The box is offered in adult, YA, and tween editions, and seems to be geared towards female readers.
I’ve had my eye on trying the experience out for a while. While I don’t need gifts for immersion purposes, I certainly love a good surprise present! And I wondered how the presents might change my reading experience. So I snagged a box that included Jilly Gagnon’s Scenes of the Crime, a thriller with an epistolary twist. And over a year after I got it, I finally allowed myself to open the box and give the whole thing a whirl.
A thin thriller with some epistolary elements
First things first – Scenes of the Crime. This is a mystery / thriller, centered on a rather toxic group of female friends spending a weekend at an Oregon winery. The narrator – and our protagonist – is a screenwriter named Emily. Then there’s Brittany, a trust-fund housewife and mother of two; Paige, vaguely in wine; and Lydia, a pale and odd video game developer. In college, they were brought together by a mutual friend, Vanessa.
But Vanessa disappeared ten years ago, and the disparate group has scattered. They regroup at the site of her disappearance at Emily’s request, in an attempt to lay old ghosts to rest. Every member of the group, it seems, has complicated feelings regarding Vanessa and the events of 10 years ago. Tensions almost immediately flare – and things get worse when mysterious mementos of Vanessa start popping up all over the winery.
So far, so typical. Gagnon’s writing is strongest when she’s describing settings. Whether it’s a busy LA café, a luxurious winery, or even cave wine cellars, her descriptions are concise yet effective. Unfortunately, the toxic clique at the heart of the story is less effectively written. Gagnon relies on tropes and implications to give each character a personality – which doesn’t work well in a thriller / mystery, where character and motivation are critical.
I mentioned an epistolary twist earlier. Scenes of the Crime features flashbacks written as scenes from Emily’s screenplay draft, complete with notes. These are effective ways to deliver exposition and theories of the past. However, they lack character development to bind us to the story and its outcomes. This is a particular challenge for Scenes of the Crime, because the characters are thin to begin with. The screenplay chapters also frequently allow Emily to tell us how anxious she is to sell the work and make her Big Break. I found this tonally jarring; it threw me out of the suspense by reminding me that the scenes were likely fictitious.
Overall, Scenes of the Crime was… fine. It was entertaining while I read it, and didn’t hold up to much scrutiny once I put it down. This is about what I expect from the average modern thriller, and it did not disappoint. The real question is – how, if at all, did the box experience change things?
The art of the gift: The Once Upon a Book Club experience
I am, shall we say, a prolific reader. Most books take me 3-4 hours to complete, and I have frequently completed a novel in a sitting after work. All of this to say, I don’t need any particular encouragement to read.
But, just as it’s nice to eat at a fancy restaurant, it can be nice to have a special experience while reading. The idea of a carefully curated collection of gifts tied to a novel sounded intriguing – like a thoughtful present from a friend. The experience of unboxing itself was lovely. Each of the presents is wrapped differently, and the box comes with a note from the team and the author. These small touches remind you that thought went into this experience – into the book, and the box itself. The whole process allowed me to get more engaged with the novel, savoring the moment and the first few chapters.
Once you get into reading, it’s business as usual until you get to the pages with the presents. On these pages, the OUABC staff have placed a sticky note right under the appropriate line, indicating where to open the next gift. These are often right in the middle of a sentence (rather than at some appropriate stopping point), and I found myself flipping the sticky up to finish the sentence before proceeding to unwrap. This broke the flow of the reading – and I think, if I do this again, I may just open at the end of the preceding paragraph.
The presents for Scenes of the Crime were concentrated at the beginning and the end of the story. Originally, I was a bit worried about this placement – would the surprises feel uneven? However, this instead allowed me to get further immersed in the meatier parts of the novel. One present landed right in the middle of the climax, which was a bit immersion-breaking. I own that I may be engaging with the experience incorrectly – but I’d rather just flow through a climactic scene than unwrap a prop for it in the middle. The presents themselves were reasonable, thoughtful, and of decent quality – I will likely keep some but not all.
However, knowing that presents were coming on specific pages kept me more engaged and curious through the process of reading. My brain decided to make a mini-game of guessing what the presents might be. Reading the text, therefore, was also a meta-puzzle to solve, which kept me going through a genre that’s not my favorite and where I’m less likely to engage.
On gifts for readers
On balance, I enjoyed my experience with Once Upon a Book Club’s box. Presents alone are unlikely to transform your experience of a mediocre book, but they add an engaging layer to a book you’re already enjoying. I’ve ordered a couple of other boxes for books that intrigue me. (I’ll probably adjust how I deal with the stickies slightly for those…) Overall – if you think you’ll already enjoy a book they’ve packaged, this can be a nice splurge version for a weekend afternoon. Perhaps more importantly, it makes me want to create my own version of this experience for the readers I know and love. It’s like a customized gift basket – but so much more thoughtful when it comes from a reader you know. Very excited to give this one a try sometime this year.
Until next time – stay cozy, and stay curious!
Scenes of the Crime will count for my standalone novel in my 52 Book Club Challenge this year!
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