On Saturday September 21st, Raincoast Books hosted it’s first Teens Read Preview…morning…day…event…thing.
That is, they invited local bloggers, librarians, and booksellers, to hear about the upcoming seasons books, get fun goodies and win some coveted ARCs.
For those of you who are not Canadian, Raincoast Books is a little difficult to explain, I suppose. They aren’t a publisher. They’re a distrubitor. So, sometimes American publishers, instead of opening up entire Canadian branches, just hire someone to distribute their American editions. Sort of. Ish.
Raincoast distributes for a whole heck of a lot of publishers, ranging from one of the Big Six (Macmillan) to small local publishers like Ronsdale Press.
So, basically everyone going knew that Cress would be there and that’s all they wanted. Well, everyone but me because I already had Cress.
Alita and I decided to travel downtown together because (a) I had no idea where I was going and (b) who wants to arrive to a room full of strangers by themselves? No one.
Except, of course, that it wasn’t strangers. I had already met three of the four wonderful Raincoast employees who were hosting us, and Alita and I were the second people to arrive after our friend Nafiza. But still, I have social anxiety for a reason. And that reason is to make me nervous about super fun things.
There were gift bags waiting on the chairs for us! And they each had, I think, four of the same books plus a unique ARC and a unique signed hardcover. I got a signed copy of Of Triton by Anna Banks1 and my ARC was <insert arc name>
Shortly after that our previously placed coffee/tea orders started to arrive and we got to business!
We basically went through a catalogue of some just release Fall titles and a lot of upcoming Winter titles. We talked about Fangirl a lot. And how we were upset that Toronto was getting Rainbow Rowell even though she CLEARLY needed to come to Vancouver. After which I told everyone how I’d already met Rainbow and that she was awesome.
Also, I feel this is the perfect place to interject that one of the Raincoast ladies looked as if she could be Emma Stone’s doppleganger and it kept freaking me out. Like out of the corner of my eye I would see her and think Emma Stone was in the room. Except obviously I knew she wasn’t. You know what I mean?
Anywhos. The books I took particular note of were The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski (which I have since read and LOVED!!! IT WAS AMAZING!), Sekret by Lindsay Smith, and I was very excited for Unforgotten by Jessica Brody.
Other than that, two books stuck out to the entire group. Like, as the wonderful ladies who were the giving the presentation read out their blurbs, we were all like, “whoa, whoa. Explain more.” But, simultaneously as a group.
The first one, Such Sweet Sorrow by Jenny Trout2 because the blurb started off as “Romeo and Juliet meets Hamlet meets Dante. And before they could go any further we were like, “Whaaaaa????” And then we had all these questions, but no one had read it yet so there were no answers. Seriously though, Juliet decides to bring Romeo back from the dead and Hamlet guards the entrance to the underworld (or is the entrance to the underworld?) and then she brings along Dante as her guide.
This might actually be the best book ever. Might. Not really. But I want to read it. I’m so intrigued.
The other book that sparked much conversation was Push Girl by Chelsie Hill and Jessica Love. Which after much attempt at explaining it to me, I still didn’t feel like I was getting it so I asked, “this is a fictional novel, based on a reality tv show, which is based on someone’s life?” And…basically…yeah.
Not my type of book, but it garnered interest and made us all stop and talk about it and the people it was written by and inspired by.
Despite getting coveted ARCs and hearing about upcoming books I was so excited for, my favourite part of the event was (a) free drink of choice and (b) getting to spend time with awesome people who love books just as much as I do. We had some fun side conversations and it was nice getting caught up with the other local bloggers and such.
Schmancy personalized bookmards!
All the awesome books I got!
I really can’t wait for the next one. Which they promised us there would be, so I plan on holding them to that.
Also, I stole a bunch of these pictures from Crystal’s instagram because I didn’t take any pictures.
- which was PERFECT because on the Adventure to Portland, that was the one book I had decided not to pick up
- a pen name for Jennifer Armintrout, not Jennifer L Armentrout just to be super confusing