Bookroo

Bookroo runs four children's book clubs banded by age, from board books for under-threes to middle grade for nine to twelve year olds, at $19.95 to $21.95 a box plus $4.99 shipping. Books arrive as Custom Edition Collection printings with uniform heights and coordinated spines, and are yours to keep. Founded in Provo, Utah in 2015 by three sisters-in-law. The problem is the subscription mechanics: BBB grades the company F for failing to answer three of four complaints, all of them about automatic renewals and gift subscriptions that turned into recurring charges.

What’s Included

Bookroo runs four clubs rather than one box, banded by reading age, which is the right structure for a category where a two-year gap changes everything.

Club	Ages	Per box	What arrives
Board Book Club	0 to 3	$21.95	Three board books, 8 to 14 pages each
Picture Book Club	3 to 6	$19.95	Two hardcovers
Junior Chapter Book Club	7 to 10	$21.95	Chapter books, 120 to 280 pages
Middle Grade Book Club	9 to 12	$21.95	Novels, 250 to 350 pages

Shipping adds $4.99 per box across the United States.

Books are yours to keep, and each box includes an insert explaining the titles. Many arrive as Custom Edition Collection printings, produced to a uniform height with coordinated spines, which is the feature most reviewers single out and a real point of difference in this category.

Pricing Plans

Monthly, 3, 6 and 12-month terms are offered. A 12-month Junior Chapter plan totals $323.28, against a list price of $431.28.

That figure is worth checking, because it confirms the rest: twelve boxes at $21.95 plus $4.99 shipping comes to exactly $323.28, and twelve at the $30.95 list plus shipping comes to exactly $431.28. The arithmetic reconciles, which is more than we can say for some pricing pages.

One caveat on the terms. The homepage advertises “as low as $21.95 a box”, implying the per-box price falls with longer commitments, but the same per-box price displays on all four term lengths. We quote the per-box figure and the shipping only, because per-term pricing could not be confirmed.

The claimed saving is also inconsistent: the homepage says up to 47% off retail, and the club pages say up to 48%. A small thing, but it is the sort of detail that should agree with itself.

How It Works

You pick a club and a term, and boxes renew on the 15th of each month.

That date matters more here than it usually would, because cancellation is not self-service. There is no button in your account. You email support@bookroo.com, and you must do it before 11:59pm Pacific on the 15th to stop that month’s box.

Prepaid multi-month plans behave better than most: they can be cancelled mid-term, and Bookroo states it will issue a pro-rata refund for the remaining months if you ask. One-time gift subscriptions cannot be cancelled and simply run out.

No skip or pause is documented. The help centre’s account section has ten articles and none covers skipping, pausing or delaying a box. We report that as undocumented rather than as confirmed absent, but plan on the basis that cancelling and rejoining is your only lever.

The Complaint Record Is the Problem

The books are well regarded. MySubscriptionAddiction named Bookroo its Best Overall kids’ book club, and it picked up a Scary Mommy Readers’ Choice award in March 2026.

Its BBB file is an F, and the reason BBB gives is failure to respond to three of the four complaints on record. What makes those four worth reading is that they say the same thing:

• June 2026, unanswered: unauthorised recurring charges on a gift subscription sold as one-time
• June 2025, unanswered: a one-time three-month gift enrolled in recurring charges without consent
• June 2024, unanswered: automatic renewal after a year-long subscription ended, with no notification
• March 2024, resolved: unexpected auto-renewal charges exceeding $185

Four complaints is a small number, and Bookroo is a small company. What concerns us is not the volume but the consistency and the silence: the same failure across more than two years, three of them unanswered, on a site that advertises “Cancel anytime. No hidden fees.”

Its Trustpilot profile carries two reviews, which is far below the ten we require before using a score at all. So unlike most boxes we rate, there is no second source. The BBB grade is the entire independent record, and under our methodology it becomes the whole customer-experience score.

Who It’s For

Bookroo suits parents who want a curated reading habit for a specific age and like the idea of a matching shelf building over time. The age banding is genuinely useful, and the custom editions are a real product advantage rather than a marketing line.

It is a poor fit if you want to choose the titles, if you need to pause around holidays or a house move, or if you are buying it as a gift. The gift path is precisely where the complaint record is worst.

What We Would Do

If you want it, subscribe monthly and never buy the gift version, since gift subscriptions cannot be cancelled and are the subject of two of the four complaints.

Put the 15th in your calendar the day you sign up, because that is your only cancellation window and it needs an email rather than a click.

And use a card you can dispute. That is unusual advice for a children’s book club, and it is what this particular record supports.

How It Compares

Against Book of the Month, these serve different households entirely: one is adult fiction you choose, the other is children’s books you do not. Book of the Month is also the better-run company by a wide margin.

Against OwlCrate, the overlap is only at the top of Bookroo’s age range, and OwlCrate is a collectible-edition product rather than a reading-habit one.

Within children’s books specifically, Bookroo is one of the few real options, which is why we cover it despite the rating.