12 Days of Book-Club-Mas

Experience the 2025 12 Days of Book-Club-Mas Advent Calendar from Once Upon a Book Club!

Our Advent Calendar recipients will receive an anthology of about 400 pages featuring 12 short stories (each ~20 pages long) featuring one of the 12 gifts. Each story is written by a different author who wrote these tales specifically to bring our selected gifts to life! As you read each short story, you’ll be prompted at key moments within them to open the corresponding gift for the day. These gifts are all incredibly useful, beautiful items, perfect for the bookworm in all of us! These gifts are not Christmas themed (only the wrapping is wintery to match the season!) and each item can be used and enjoyed year-round.

Each book box will include a custom and exclusive book of 12 short stories that can only be found in our box, along with 12 beautiful gifts (one for each story!).

This box has a value of over $400 and are expected to ship in early December.

As usual, this year’s box will feature four days where the wrapped gifts will be full-length, published novels. Please note that Adult and Young Adult will include different novels on these four days. The other eight days of gifts will be the same in both boxes, so please bear in mind that only the books are different in each box. We will have extra books from both the Adult and Young Adult boxes available for individual purchase in January for those of you who do not want a duplicate set of the other eight gifts.

This year’s novella includes short stories written by Kyle Ann Robertson, Kylie Minton, Kristin Kisska, Myra Scott, Jasmine Kuliasha, Megan LaCroix, Ella Dupuie, Cate Collins, Sherilyn M. Reyes, Jenna Yun, Kelsey Hebert, and Sophie Sullivan.

12 Days of Book-Club-Mas by Once Upon a Book Club
Published by: Once Upon a Book Club 2025 (unknown date)
Genre: Anthology, short stories
Pages: 358
Dates Read: 12.14.25 – 12.25.25
Purchase: sold out
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If you’ve read any of my posts, then you know I love Once Upon a Book Club (OUABC)!!! I could not wait to tear into the year’s Christmas box. For those who are unfamiliar, OUABC is a book subscription box that also includes amazing gifts. Each month, you receive a new book and 3-5 gifts that go along with the book. I’ve subscribed for a little over a year, and I think every book I have received has been a new release. For example, if it’s the October box, then that book was released in October. But unlike other subscription boxes that give you random gifts that fit a theme, these gifts bring the story to life! As you read along in the book, you will eventually come to a page that has a sticky that says “Open your gift,” and you find the gift that corresponds to that page number and open it up. The gift always matches something that is happening on that page in the story. How cool is that!?! Most of the time, the books are paperback, but occasionally they do send out special editions, with either a special design specifically for OUABC or a special edition that has sprayed edges. That is my only tiny complaint about this particular subscription box is that I wish they had more special “pretty” editions.

Throughout the year, OUABC offers special boxes, such as Valentine’s Day boxes, Halloween boxes, and Christmas boxes, like the one I’m currently posting about. They are a little pricier than a normal subscription box, but in my opinion, it’s usually because the gifts are a bit nicer than those in other boxes. And in the case of the Christmas box, you get 12 freaking gifts. You start reading the first story on December 14th, and each day you have a new gift to open up, all the way until December 25th! As a single woman in my 40s, with no kids, I don’t really get many (if any) Christmas presents, so this has become my yearly tradition to treat myself with. So as soon as the pre-orders open up, I’ll get my name down on that list, because they go fast!!!

This year’s book had 12 stories with a wide variety of genres, so there’s something for everyone in it. Out of the 12 stories, there were only 2 that I was kind of meh about. The other 10 were SO good!! Some had a romantic theme in them, some fantasy, some sci-fi, and even some horror and suspense. I loved them! I think the shortest story was 15 pages long, and the longest one was 38 pages, so I’d say they take anywhere from about 30 minutes to an hour to get through, and then you open your gift!

So what were the gifts, you’re asking? There are always 4 new books and 8 actual gift items. This year I received a Christmas ornament (that I regifted to my Secret Santa since she’s also a book babe, hi Andrea if you’re reading this! haha), a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle that, when put together it contains a secret coded message in it that goes along with the story it came from (no I haven’t put it together yet lol), a very pretty keychain, some facial masks with cute book related names on them, a candle that contained a secret message inside once it was burned down that went along with the story it came from, a very interesting book necklace that actually opens and has pages with inscriptions on it that also goes alone with the story, a very cool new insulated lunch box, and the grand finale…a charcuterie board that I didn’t even know I wanted but now I love!!!

Feel free to browse through the pictures and see the goodies for yourself. I hope everyone had an incredible holiday! ❤