After weeks and weeks of counting down to YA Prom, the day finally arrived and I have never been so excited for a book event. Basically, Katherine Webber is a genius because she held a prom-themed event for the launch of her new book, Only Love Can Break Your Heart.
After getting all glammed up and travelling into London, my friend Jess and I arrived at the venue: Battersea Arts Centre. After arriving in flip flops and changing into our heels on the steps outside, we headed into the venue and up the sweeping staircase. Here, we took some arrival photos in front of this beautiful, shiny backdrop.
For anyone who is interested, my dress is the Aerin dress by Chi Chi London.
After taking lots of photos at the top of the staircase, we headed into the main hall where there was a stage, seating areas and these string lights in the windows, which I was obsessed with!
Then Katherine Webber and Rosi Crawley took to the stage, welcoming everyone and giving details for what the evening would include. First up was a movie music quiz!
They played a snippet of ten songs that appears in movie prom scenes and we had to guess the films. We got eight out of ten, which isn't bad considering we left one blank, but two teams got ten out of ten which was very impressive!
Then Katherine was back on stage to give out her "Most likely to..." awards to the other amazing authors in attendance.
Rosi was then back on stage to announce Prom King and Queen. Prom King went to Kevin Tsang and Prom Queen went to Katherine. I would have voted for them both too.
You've got to love Katherine's surprised face!
We then enjoyed drinks, dancing and a pizza buffet whilst mingling with the authors and other prom guests. It was so lovely to catch up with people, such as Zoe from No Safer Place. We speak a lot online but it was great to see each other in person again. I got to speak to quite a few bookish people that I've been friends with on Twitter for ages but had never met in person, which was so lovely. People were so welcoming and chatty, and that is just one of the many things that I love about this community. I always love speaking to bloggers and BookTubers online, but getting to see them in person makes events like this extra special.
We also spoke to a few authors, including Will Hill and Alywn Hamilton. Will was kind enough to sign our copies of After The Fire and we had a good chat as well. Then I was very excited to speak to Alywn because I absolutely love the Rebel of the Sands series. There were so many brilliant authors there, and if I could've wheeled a case full of all of their books in to be signed I would have done, but the authors were there to enjoy the night too and it was nicer to speak to them about their work and other things.
I got a copy of Only Love Can Break Your Heart at the event, which Katherine kindly signed (I've inserted pictures of my two signed books at the end of this post!) It's such a beautiful cover and I've heard great things from those who have already been lucky enough to read it, so I can't wait to get started. Luckily, I now have six weeks to do as much reading as I like.
During these six weeks I am running a Summer Reading Challenge, which involves reading six books over the next six weeks of summer. You can find out more about it here, and see how you can join in with our charity 24 hour readathon too!
See, I told you I was obsessed with these string lights! Obviously I had to have a picture in front of them!
This really was such a fun event and I'm so glad that I was able to attend. Thank you to Walker Books YA, Katherine Webber, Rosi Crawley and everyone else who made the evening so amazing. I really do hope that this is the first of many fun events like this.
Finally, a big thank you to Jess for being my beautiful prom date. Thank you for embracing the bookish life with me and for putting up with me waffling on about books 90% of the time I'm with you. You're a great friend!
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