Mystery Box – Dark Academia

Hello and welcome back to another Mystery Box review! Today I want to show you another Box made by the same people who did the Blinddate with a Book Box I reviewed about a year ago. It’s very similar in the way that’s it included a mystery book again, but it has some very different extras which is why I wanted to show it to you^^

The Box is themed after Dark Academia, which was something I have heard about before, but could not really tell what it was about actually xD So I did a little research and it turns out, it’s actually similar to something I do know which is Cottage Core. Liking Cottage core basically means adoring a kind of lifestyle where you would live out in nature in a cottage far away from modern cities. It’s about the idea, the aesthetics and the items connected to it. People buy certain clothes, decorative items and even books, to match this idea.
Dark Academia seems to be the same thing, but of course with a different image in mind. It’s about people wearing student clothes inspired by universities like Oxford in 1930, reading high literature books and watching artistic films. The “dark” part of the aesthetic comes from the gothic building style most older universities have. So instead of wanting to live in a cottage people like the idea of studying in dark corners with candlelight, reading books that make them think about life or books which take place in an academic scenario too. So with all of that in mind, I am actually pretty curious about what I will be getting in this new Mystery Box 😉

Firstly I sadly have to say that my original box got lost in the mail :/ I would normally not have mentioned it, since it got replaced as soon as the Shop got wind of it being missing and I even got some extra gifts because of it, but it did have slightly different contents, which I will be talking about in more detail later in the review. But for now, let’s get back to the opening of the package! As we know it from the Etsy Shop Coffeeacademia everything was packaged nicely, which makes opening this box not only about the items you get but an experience all in itself. What I really love about boxes from them in particular, it makes them stand out from other Mystery boxes I have opened. Most things were wrapped in this vintage-looking brown paper, one of them even had some scrapbooking on the top, which I think looks beautiful and I even tried to save it somehow, even though I don’t know what to do with it later. But it seemed too precious to be just thrown away after getting to what was inside! And there were a lot of things 😉

Let’s start with the extras before we get to the main attraction of the box. One of the first things we get is a metal candle holder which has a little handle on one side and really reminds me of the old times when people needed to carry a candle around at night if they wanted to see. With the theme of dark academia, I could imagine a scene where scholars would be studying books until late in the evening or even the night and at some point, when they want to get another book, they have to carry their candle to the bookshelf, to be able to read the names written on the back of the books sitting there. Still, it somewhat bugs me that originally I thought I was getting a wooden candleholder without a handle, to only be used on the desk. Because even though I just described a possible scene, when I look at this kind of candle holder, for some reason my mind goes to a different kind of aesthetic. Still, I like the candle holder very much, it’s just not as fitting for me.

Next up is the little bust which of course is to decorate your surroundings to feel more in a room that could technically be at an old university. Where they have busts and statues standing around, for people to look at, take in and get inspired by. I can see how it would help get into the right mood for studying, but when I say this bust is little, I mean very little, maybe 3-5cm depending on how you measure it. I can’t say for sure, but I feel like on the picture they made to represent their box on Etsy they tried to make it look bigger. And for me personally, I think it would have needed to be at least a little bit bigger, maybe 10cm to actually have the effect I just talked about. With a statue smaller than my little finger, I can’t really try to imagine myself sitting at an old prestige university…

Last but not least we got a feather quill pen in a beautiful turquoise colour with a leaf, that vaguely reminds me of lord of the rings. It does look cool and all, but I have to say it might be almost the item that got me disappointed the most, mainly because I do already own this kind of quill pen. One thing to mention is that the box I did buy(or better got gifted) was a limited edition box, but almost right after the last box was sent away, the shop seemed to have made it a regular thing, maybe because it was received so well by their customers. In this new dark academia themed box, they did use different pictures even though most items were the same. Now that’s exactly where my problem comes in because I do think for the new box they got different materials and on the pictures, they do advertise a different kind of quill pen, the one I got obviously. But the quill they did advertise before was a little different. It had a long golden shaft with some marking on the top and the bottom and it looked really special to me, since as some of you know I do use different kinds of quills for writing letters or greeting cards for special occasions, so I do already own some but not this particular one. And I was really looking forward to getting a model like that, it might have even been the reason why I decided to get the box in the first place. So not getting it eventually makes me a bit sad. But I don’t really know if it would be fair to really include that in the verdict at the end since the shop obviously could not really do something about it, they did not lose the box and they did not have any spare models of this quill or at least that’s what I assume since they did not really tell me. Which I do think, they could have.

As a little extra for the box getting lost I guess, next to the candle holder coming with two instead of one candle(one green, one white candle) I got a cute little pin. It’s shaped like a blue heart with golden embellishments and it says “courage, dear hearts”. I don’t really get the connection to the theme of the box, but I do like the pin as a little compensation. I also got two little things, which I think can be used as bookmarks but are not the typical bookmark 😉 One is a very thing metal feather painted in gold and the other is a little sword, not sure what it’s made of, but it’s painted in silver. Only the feather was mentioned on Etsy, so I assume again the sword might be a little extra, which I am very happy about. Looks cool in a book, I am just a little scared that it maybe get lost easily, but we will see about that 😛
I also got an already sharped pencil, a very small post-it block and some page markers in different colours. I don’t really know where to include them since they were not advertised on Etsy and also don’t really seem to fit the aesthetic… The pencil is very typical, just a solid orange-like colour with no writings on it and a red eraser on the end. The post it’s and the markers look like very normal(and kinda cheap) office materials. I guess it can be used for studying, but not in an aesthetically pleasing way and I thought that was what this whole box was about, so I am a bit confused.

In almost every box the shop sells they do also put a cup because drinking a hot beverage might it be tea or hot chocolate, or a coffee maybe while reading a book, is most people’s definition of a great book date. They also always include one of the aforementioned beverages in this case they send me two small bags of tea, which I do appreciate(even though I liked the option from the last books I got from the shop, being able to actually choose because I would have chosen hot cocoa). But the cup itself is always kinda underwhelming… With the packaging, the scrapbooking and the vintage feel of everything, when it comes to the cups I would have expected to see something more special. In this case, maybe a cup which is made to look like it’s a cup from one of those famous universities, or a cup which has a reading quote on it for example. I just feel like it’s a wasted opportunity and I also don’t really need a boring cup with every box, because they have no advantage over the cups I do already own.

Now to get to the heart of the box, let me show you the books that I have got! The smaller one is a penguin book with short tales or maybe even fables in them, which I feel like do fit the idea of dark academia very well. Because when I think of this topic, heavy literature comes to my mind ASAP. For some reason mostly stuff that I know if I would read it, I might not be able to understand it on the first go xD And these fables are exactly that, but in a more user-friendly kind of way, since rereading such a one-page fable is easier than rereading big chapters in an old book. So I feel like this one really hit the nail on its head for this box. The other one not so much…
The second book I’ve got is a spy/assassin story from what I understand. It’s not exactly “wrong” since when it came to choosing which kind of book I wanted, I choose the option “Suprise me with an English book” but I also wrote to the shop and asked for a vampire book(if they would have any). They actually never answered me and I can’t say for sure, that the book which got lost with the other package might not have been a vampire book, but I still was kinda disappointed with this one. Not only did it not consider my wish for the genre, it also does not seem to have anything to do with the theme of dark academia at all.

Final Verdict
Coming up with a verdict on this box is very hard for me. First, there is the problem with the original box getting lost and the question of: Is it fair to view this box with the expectations I had for the other one? On the other hand, I feel like the shop could have at least asked if it would have been okay to send a replacement package and what to include. We can’t say something about the other box, but my vampire request did not seem to have been considered at all in this one or at least I have no indication of they may be trying. No note which says “Sorry we did not have any vampire books at hand, but hopefully this story will be to your liking too!”. The customer experience really was not the best one this time :/ I am sadder about the items I did not get or getting them in a different version than I can really be happy about the items I did get. I do like the idea of a themed box like this one and I would love to try another theme done by the shop one day maybe. I also think that fans of the dark academia aesthetic will like this box, if they don’t expect to get certain items, but rather just wish to get a fitting selection. So I guess I would say I am not the biggest fan of this box in particular but if you are interested in it, there is no reason not to buy it 😉

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress