BookBeat – An honest review
Do you enjoy reading but find you rarely are able to make enough time to read and finish a book? I love books and when I do have time I really do enjoy reading but I always seem to have something else to do first and books I start I rarely finish!
My love of books
I do love books though and have read to Ben since he was a little baby and now he reads with me every evening and loves his books too. He falls asleep every evening listening to audiobooks too.
As a family, we were excited to be able to try out and review BookBeat and we were given a year’s subscription.
What is Bookbeat?
BookBeat is an audiobook subscription where you can download audiobooks and listen to them wherever you are. Enjoying them whether you have an internet connection or not.
The monthly cost after a free trial is £14.90 to enjoy unlimited listening but you can cancel at any time. Although this may sound like a lot there are no hidden costs this is literally all you pay and when you look at it daily it’s less than 50p a day which doesn’t seem bad at all.
How much do you spend on yourself? If you are a mum like me then chances are you rarely spend anything on yourself. I guess you don’t have time to do things anyway. If you had a way of enjoying books again then it is a nice treat, isn’t it?
How I got on with Bookbeat
Books on BookBeat can be downloaded so they can be listened to offline and also listened to online.
I found it helpful to listen to the first part of a book to decide if I was enjoying it. This was great before deciding whether to download it or not.
I have listened to part of a few books now, at home in the bath, in the car, on the train, working, and whilst out for a short run. Excitedly I am looking forward to listening more on longer runs.
Listening to books in the bath is becoming a great “me” time and meaning I can enjoy books and it fits well into a busy life without feeling like I should be doing something else instead of taking time out for me!
Choosing a book
Looking through the categories of books it was difficult to decide what to listen to first but the great thing about BookBeat is that you can have lots of different books on the go at once.
There are thousands of audiobooks to choose from. I also love the fact that I can start listening to a book and if I don’t enjoy the book straight away or it is not like I expected I can stop.
Then I can start another without having wasted any money. When you buy a paper book you don’t have that do you, if you don’t like the book it’s £5 or so wasted!
Did Ben like Bookbeat?
As I said Ben loves his books and falls asleep listening to audiobooks on CD every night. With BookBeat I can set the sleep timer so it only plays for a set period of time and doesn’t drain his iPad battery!
As the books aren’t on CD it has been great when we have spent a weekend away because Ben has still been able to fall asleep to an audiobook without having to take a CD player on holiday!
He has found a few of his favourites already, David Walliams, David Baddiel etc. Also, I have added others I would love him to read or listen to including Michael Morpurgo and classics like J M Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy.
My overall thoughts
I have really enjoyed listening to some audiobooks in my subscription so far. Spending time I have found lots of books that take my fancy. I was impressed to find so many popular authors.
Initially, I worried that all the books on BookBeat would be classics or unknown authors. However, alongside lots of classics, there are authors like Josephine Cox, Cecelia Ahern, David Mitchell (his autobiography), and the Game of Thrones books by George R R Martin.
I haven’t really investigated the non-fiction books properly yet though there are a lot of choices there by the looks of it too. I will write about that in an updated review later in my subscription as I am sure there will be lots on there to discover and enjoy too.
Where does Bookbeat work?
We have used BookBeat on both my Android mobile phone and Ben’s iPad Air. On both devices, it was very easy to navigate and find all the great books they have.
There are best sellers in each category along with being able to search for favourites and new books. The settings are easy to navigate and it is extremely simple to download books.
I hope you find lots to listen to and enjoy for you and your kids. You can download it on a few different devices (just not at the same time) so you can listen to something and the kids can too! Let me know what you discover and your favourite books!
