Happy Monday everyone! Today I’m bringing you my event recap of the #BigBookBrunch blogger event by Hashtag Reads, Simon and Schuster and I had the best time. It was my first blogger event on 2019 and I was so excited to go. It was also the first the blogger event that Simon and Schuster have hosted as well. I hope they do many many more. One week from the event and I’m still buzzing. So today I thought I would share some of the highlights of the event.

Lovely publicists Eve and Olivia, presented some of the key YA titles coming out this year including Five Feet Apart, I have this book and I can’t wait to read it and then they shared the trailer…. this honestly choked me. I tried hard to not let it show but oh god. I then try to talk to one of my junior librarians who has read it and said, “Is it a sad ending?”, “You’ll have to find out, Miss.” I have raised those junior librarians too well. Ha.

Followed by SLAYER by Kierstin White, can’t wait to sink into this book, so bad. Then Eve, introduced our first guest Laura Bates, author of YA debut, The Burning.

 

I was honestly inspired by Laura, her talk made me utterly speechless. How she started Everyday Sexism, that took on a whole new meaning to her original idea of the website. How she was sneaked into a school to talk to students about it. How we still look at the assumption it’s this person or becuase of them it’s their vault, when they are the victim. It was powerful and as a librarian, it hits you, I never had this when I was growing, or it wasn’t talked about as much, now working with young adults, we are talking about it, but we are still a long way from conquing it, and stories like The Burning should be read and heard. She was so lovely to talk to about it, I felt quite emotional.

Some other YA highlights from S&S were: The Cold in her Bones losely based on mytholgy and medusa, a brand new series from Cassandra Clare – The Red Scrolls of Magic. Romance novel about finding an author from author, Jenn Bennett – Serious Moonlight, new novel from Sarah Carroll, The Words that Fly between Us – finding strength to face your fears and finally a new novel from T.E. Carter, All We Could Have Been. I Stop Somewhere was one of my favourite books of 2018. It’s a harrowing story but one that needs to be heard. Her second book has a bit more of an uplifting tone to it. I have a proof and I can’t wait.

 

Finally, our last but certainly not least guest author is Amy McCulloch. You see I met Amy a couple of day proior to this on my World Book Day at school, but it was so great to see her again and it didn’t that I had this talk before because a) I LOVE Jinxed and b) she did a sneak peak of book 2 – UNLEASHED which was even more amazing.

 

The Big Book Brunch has been one of the best blogger event I’ve been too in ages. I met some bloggers, Jenn (Jenniely) and Beth (The Reader’s Corner) which was great as I’m always so shy. We got an epic haul of goodies and we also had a design a notebook competition and I found out a couple of days ago that I won…!!! So thank you so much to the Hashtag Reads team for such a cracking event. Hope to see everyone at the next one.