The Y.A. Bookworm Blogger: HCC Frenzy Presents Recap + Book Haul

Photo from my The YA Bookworm Blogger Instagram page.

On August 9th, Harper Collins Canada (HCC) was kind enough to invite me—as well as some other book bloggers and booktubers from the Toronto area— to HCC Frenzy Presents! The event essentially consisted of a presentation discussing eleven upcoming Harper Teen releases, bookish goodie bags, yummy snacks, and lots of time to socialize...it was honestly a blast!

The event was slated to start at 2PM, so at 1:55 I made the decision to start making my way towards the elevators. As I was about to approach the security desk, I was so excited to hear a familiar voice calling my name: Indigo from Adventures in YA Fiction. To say I was ecstatic to see her would be an understatement! I was lucky enough to meet Indigo at last year's event and was looking forward to seeing her again and catching up. The two of us went up the elevator together and were welcomed in by the HCC Frenzy team. After filling in our name tags, it was time to start the festivities!

Upon entering the boardroom (and yes, to get to said boardroom involved passing by the desks of people who get to work with books for a living #GOALS), Indigo and I took a seat in the exact same seats we sat in last year—I swear, it was fate! We both decided to grab some snacks and get comfy for the presentation.

The HCC ladies did an amazing job at getting all of us in the room excited for some hot upcoming releases. My personal fav?! Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard! I reviewed the first novel, Red Queen, on my blog earlier this year for the blog tour and fell in love with the world Victoria created....plus the covers are GORGEOUS! I've included links to all of the books that were discussed below so you can check them out :)

After the presentation was over, the mingling began! I initially started off talking to Indigo when, out of nowhere, Andreya from Little Yellow Bookshop came over to say hi! First of all, if you haven't heard of Andreya before, you NEED to go check out her videos....they are so artfully done and will do good things to your eyeballs— trust me! We were both so thrilled to see each other because we had JUST spoken the day before about meeting for coffee sometime in September (I've included a screenshot of our tweets just to prove to you how bizarre it was that neither of us were aware we'd be meeting the next day)! Andreya is just as sweet in person as she is in her videos; I'm really looking forward to meeting up with her again to discuss all things booktube related. Oh, and did I mention she is the editor-in-chief of an online magazine?! I can't wait to see the places this girl goes...click HERE to check out the Mimp Mag website!

While the three of us were talking, Lily from Lily's Book Blog joined us and words can't describe the feels that were felt when I saw her! Lily and I have been exchanging tweets for about two years now so it was so surreal to actually be speaking to her in person (you can thank her for being the one to really convince me to read A Court of Thorns and Roses...her excitement sealed the deal for me....plus she also mentioned steamy scenes! Me like-y the steamy ;) Her blog is amazing and really well put together; I highly recommend checking her out!

The following hour and a half consisted of meeting and chitchatting with many other bookish friends. I was so happy to meet Shelly from Read Sleep Repeat (she was so sweet and her business cards were on point, haha), Brittany from This Is The Story of My(Reading) Life (We had some awesome NA discussions and she was even a winner of one of my giveaways last year! So cool!), Lynne from Words of Mystery (I've spoken to her on twitter and met her at last year's Frenzy Presents so it was great to see her again!), and Nova from Out Of Time (once again, I've been talking with this girl on twitter for about two years and she is just a doll...she also just posted her first booktube video—which was MUCH better than my first video— so be sure to welcome her to the community)!

Photo from @indigowayworth (instagram)

As the event started to come to a close, I said my goodbyes and took some obligatory selfies infront of the Harper Collins sign with Andreya, Indigo, Lily, and Shelly. Afterwards we decided to caffeinate ourselves at Starbucks where we continued getting to know one another and even discussed meeting again to maybe film some videos. I really do hope we can all get together again soon because talking with them felt as if I had been friends with all of them for years! This event reminded me once again how powerful the book community truly is and just how amazing it is to connect with people who share the same passions as you....it's over a week later and I still find myself smiling about it all the time!

I guess I'll finish this post off by once again thanking HCC Frenzy for putting on yet another fantastic event. There aren't many events like these where Ontario bloggers/booktubers can get together so it was incredibly special to have been a part of this one...I'm counting down the days till next year! Keep Reading!

Your Y.A. Bookworm Blogger,

Caitlin <3