I first heard about BookCon last year on Instagram. I saw all the book hauls from our beloved bookstagrammers and I knew that I wanted to go the next time it was on. So when I found out tickets went on sale a few weeks before Christmas, I looked into doing a full trip to New York. I enlisted a friend of mine to go with me as I didn’t feel comfortable going all that way alone (I’m a big baby) plus, I knew that I would need an extra pair of hands to carry all my books! Once I bought our tickets, things got real. We had to spend money on flights, insurance, hotel rooms and we had to figure out the logistics of our trip: should we spend a few days in NY to do some touristy things? If so, what comes under the ‘Must do’ and ‘Would like to do’ lists? Luckily, we had 5 months to plan it and I am happy to say that we ticked everything off our ‘Must do’ list! I won’t go into everything we did as I want to keep it about the books but my Funko pop Groot took a load of pictures and they can be found at the very end of this post if you are interested.

Saturday, 2nd June:

Our itinerary for this day was as follows:

10am – Fawkes ARC drop, said ‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November’ for swag. The ARC was signed by author and we received the Blue and Yellow mask cards.

12:15pm – Victoria Aveyard signing. I took my UK Red Queen copy and I bought the collectors edition for her to sign.

1:30pm – Deborah Harkness signing. I took my UK A Discovery of Witches copy and bought the american versions of the All Souls Trilogy for her to sign. She also gave me a signed bookplate for her upcoming book Time’s Convert.

3:15pm – Too-Real YA reads at Harlequin booth. Received two copies of Fat Girl on a Plane.

4:30pm – Romance drop at Harlequin booth. Received incredibly cheesy romance novels which I gifted to my mother.

Saturday was a good day for author signings, not just for myself but the authors available on Saturday seemed to be more well known/in higher demand. We visited the BookCon shop stand which had all the popular YA reads for sale. Many other stands had books for sale too, some as cheap as $5 dollars a paperback (£3.73!) which I of course took advantage of. There were some merch booths too. I bought this super cute oversized mug from Obvious State which I have already started using since being back. Saturday was hectic, we were a little like foxes in a hen coop; we didn’t know where we were going or what to go for but we knew we wanted stuff. I considered this our trial day.

Books acquired: 16

Time: 8.5 hours

Steps: 14,619

Sunday, 3rd June:

Our itinerary for this day was as follows:

11:15am – Must have YA: Series Starters at Harlequin booth. Received two copies of Shadow of the Fox.

12:30pm – Laini Taylor signing. I took my UK A Night of Cake and Puppets copy and I bought two copies of Strange the Dreamer for her to sign.

3pm – Too-Real YA reads at Harlequin booth. Received One Small Thing & When Elephants Fly.

Sunday was more relaxed; we knew where we had to go, how long we could stay in a certain line, which areas were our priority, etc. We felt like professionals instead of newbies. I will say this, Sunday was definitely the best day for ARC’s. Many booths were just offering them towards the end of the day. Simon & Schuster were literally shoving them at us at one point which was hilarious. This was also the day we received copies of City of Ghosts and it was purely by accident. We knew Schwab was going to be signing copies but when we looked at the line for it, we admitted defeat and came to the conclusion that we were not going to be lucky. So on one of our last spins around the floor (we would frequently walk aimlessly in case more books got thrown our way), we walked past Schwab still signing well after her time slot. We saw the 15 people in the queue and quite literally ran to the end. And we scored big. We were both beyond ecstatic that we managed to meet her and get signed copies when we thought we wouldn’t. It was one of the top highlights from the entire Con.

Books acquired: 16

Time: 6.5 hours

Steps: 12,845

Book Haul:

I only bought 7 books for myself, four of which are signed copies. All the books that are signed have an * at the end.

Red Queen (Collector’s Edition) – Victoria Aveyard*

All Souls Trilogy – Deborah Harkness*

Fawkes (ARC) – Nadine Brandes*

City of Ghosts (ARC) – Victoria Schwab*

One small Thing (ARC) – Erin Watt

When Elephants Fly (ARC) – Nancy Richardson Fischer

2x See All The Stars (ARC) – Kit Frick

A Heart in a Body in the World (ARC) – Deb Caletti

2x Dry (ARC) – Neal Shusterman

The Devil’s Thief (ARC) – Lisa Maxwell

2x Shadow of the Fox (ARC) – Julie Kagawa

Kill The Farm Boy (ARC) – Delilah S. Dawson

Ordinary People (ARC) – Diana Evans

Red Rising – Pierce Brown

2x Strange the Dreamer – Laini Taylor*

Busted – Gina Ciocca

Labrinth Lost – Zoraida Cordova

Bookish Boyfriends: A Date with Darcy – Tiffany Schmidt

2x Fat Girl on a Plane – Kelly deVos

2x Trail of Lightning – Rebecca Roanhorse

Four incredibly cheesy romance novels which I refuse to share the titles of. Insert your own here.

Swag Haul:

I didn’t pick up nearly as much swag as I thought I would. The lines for Owlcrate and LitJoy were both extensive and we agreed we would only do them once to save our sanity. I did buy an Owlcrate BookCon T-shirt though, it was too good to pass up! There were plenty of booths that had the ‘Spin the wheel’ game or ‘Plinko’ but the prizes were subpar and so we didn’t play all that much. There were samplers floating about that were in high demand though. King of Scars and Catwoman to name the top two which had insane lines!

 

Groot’s adventures