Page & Wick #10: January 2026

It seems like Page & Wick has been having quite a lot of bad luck lately.

I had skipped the September and November boxes, but I had no more skips left for the January one. Normally, I should have received a reset for the new year, but that wasn’t the case on their website at the time, and I didn’t really feel like chasing after it, lol. So yes, January wasn’t skipped, although I am increasingly having doubts about whether the Page & Wick subscription is actually right for me. Their choices are more often than not romantasy, and I have absolutely nothing against that genre, but they aren’t stories I specifically look out for or would want an expensive special edition of. Unless, of course, you come up with authors like Sarah J. Maas, lol.

Anyway, back to why Page & Wick has been having so much bad luck.

This is an unboxing of their January book. In the worst-case scenario, I would have expected it in early February. In the end, the book wasn’t delivered until mid-May. The shipping partner Page & Wick worked with turned out not to be doing their job particularly well. Books were shipped poorly packaged, resulting in damage; unremovable stickers were stuck on books; packages ended up at the wrong addresses, and so on.

Page & Wick therefore decided to temporarily suspend all shipments until they had found a new shipping partner and everything was back in order.

I find it genuinely admirable that they chose to halt shipping completely to prevent their customers from becoming the victims. Unfortunately, this is not the first problem they have had to resolve. I’ve already received several books from them with printing errors, production problems, or other mistakes. And yes, naturally, this plays a role in my consideration of whether I want to keep this subscription.

But anyway, back to this unboxing.

The theme for January was Once Upon a Winters Curse, which naturally immediately brings to mind a winter fairy tale. As expected, this book would once again be a romantasy, full of shadow magic, a cursed kingdom, and the classic enemies-to-lovers trope. In themselves, all elements that I quite enjoy in stories.

This book was A Curse of Shadows and Ice by Catharina Maura.

I had never heard of this author or this book, but as soon as I read that it was a Beauty and the Beast retelling, my enthusiasm immediately shot up quite a bit, lol.

In itself, the synopsis indeed sounds like something that would fit nicely within such a retelling. Perhaps not particularly original or surprising, but that association alone automatically makes me more interested.

To be honest, I didn’t find the standard cover particularly inspired, so I’m glad Page & Wick turned it into something completely different.

The illustration by @kasia.jasmina really feels like something out of a fairytale book. I find the duality between the light side on the left and the dark side on the right particularly original. The drawing is packed with details, and I am a fan of the drawing style.

I also think the way the illustrations on both the front and back are framed with silver foil is very successful. It reinforces that fairytale book feeling even more.

This cover is undoubtedly a huge step forward compared to the standard cover.
At the same time, strangely enough, it isn’t a cover that really grabs my attention. I suspect I might just walk past it in a bookstore. Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s beautiful. But it doesn’t immediately draw my eye. I can’t quite explain why.

The hardcover itself, on the other hand, fully exudes that wintry atmosphere. The background consists of shades of blue, purple, black, and white, with text and snowflakes in silver foil.

Given that we received a Page & Wick book with a typo on the cover in the past, I reread this text several times to check if everything was correct this time, lol.

I don’t see any mistakes, so phew!

Otherwise, I think the hardcover is fine. Nothing really mind-blowing, but certainly nice enough.

That same feeling of “not wow, but nice enough” actually continues with the sprayed edges.

At the top and bottom, we get only a solid colour, while the front is adorned with an illustration of snowflakes and roses.

I find it a bit strange that those roses suddenly take such a prominent role here. Until now, that motif hasn’t really been pushed to the forefront anywhere. Yes, there are roses on the cover illustration, but they don’t seem more important there than all the other elements.

As a result, the choice of roses on the sprayed edges feels a bit unexpected. But anyway, the colour palette fits nicely within the overall design.

With Page & Wick, we usually get the same illustration on both endpapers, and this illustration by @drawing.llamas really radiates Beauty and the Beast. The appearance of the female character and her dress, in particular, immediately bring Belle to mind.

In itself, I can absolutely see that this is a beautiful illustration and that the artist has a lot of talent.

Yet, I wasn’t really impressed by it.
The quality of the endpapers seemed substandard. The drawing looked blurry, as if a small image had been blown up much too large. At first, I thought this might be a deliberate artistic choice to give the scene a somewhat dreamy feel?

Until a few days later, I received an email from Page & Wick with, yes, yet another apology. Oh my goodness.
By now, it feels like they’ve had to send out an apology email for almost every book I’ve received from them.

This is what they wrote:

Due to a production error, an incorrect file was used for the endpapers. While the difference is subtle, we want to ensure the beautiful artwork is shared exactly as it was originally intended.

To do this, we will be sending a high-quality art print to all affected customers. This will be dispatched to you separately once ready, and no action is needed on your part.

So yes, the blurry appearance was clearly not a deliberate choice at all.
And of course, it is kind of them to want to send an extra art print, but honestly, I don’t really need that. I would have preferred a partial refund.

I increasingly get the feeling that there are serious problems with communication and quality control at Page & Wick. How is it possible that this keeps happening?

It doesn’t exactly make me enthusiastic about the company, and it also gives me little confidence to keep my subscription.

I can certainly sympathize with a small business, but after being active for three years, you can hardly call them a new firm anymore. At some point, you really expect that the biggest stumbling blocks are behind them by now and that certain mistakes won’t keep recurring. To be honest, it is starting to get a bit embarrassing.

So yes, my first Page & Wick box after two skips hasn’t really convinced me that I want to keep this subscription.

Their ideas are often good and the concepts are usually interesting. But for me, it lacks that real wow factor too often. And the fact that errors almost consistently pop up in their editions certainly doesn’t help either, especially for a subscription with a rather hefty price tag.
My patience for giving them extra leeway has pretty much run out by now.

This subscription offers three skips on six books per year. I have already skipped the books from March, May, and July because not a single book appealed to me enough to want an expensive special edition of it.
According to my account, I currently have one skip left, whereas I thought they were all used up. So for now, I’m letting the subscription run for a bit longer to see what my upcoming choices will be.
But I suspect that as soon as I can no longer skip and the book choices don’t convince me, I will probably cross this subscription off my list.

Moreover, last week Page & Wick announced that they are launching a new quarterly subscription based on Epic Fantasy starting in October. And barely a few days later, an announcement for a waiting list for a new bimonthly Spicy Romance subscription followed.
They clearly feel ready to expand. However, my experience with them has not yet convinced me of their maturity and consistency that warrants and inspires confidence for such an expansion.

Although the words “Epic Fantasy” make my ears perk up, I will pass on that subscription with a clear conscience.
My opinion might change someday, but for now, they first need to prove to me that they have their current production process fully under control.

Cheers,
Charlotte