Recapping Day 2 of 2018's BookCon

Are you ready to hear all about Day 2 of my BookCon 2018 experience? Because I’m totally not ready to write about it. But I will anyway. ;)

Before I get to the recap, make sure to check out my recap of Day 1, if you missed yesterday’s post.

Me, frizzy-haired and exhausted just thinking about walking the convention floor all day.

For the second day of BookCon, me and my roommate didn’t have to get up as early since we’d already nabbed copies of the Empire of Sands. There was a third ARC drop scheduled for 10 a.m. Thank goodness we didn’t have to do that.

Instead, we got to the Javits Center around 10:05ish, which meant no line-waiting to get into the convention floor. Whew!

The first event I had on my to-do list for Sunday was a Royals tea party and Rachel Hawkins signing event in Penguin Teen’s booth. I bought a finished copy of Royals, which was the only book I bought at BookCon. Speaking of, I’d actually set a goal for myself of spending less than $100 at BookCon. Counting food and the Royals, I spent less than $50. Woot! Woot! Go me!

Back to the tea party event. Penguin had pastries and tea before Rachel’s signing. I had a pastry, but I don’t like tea, so I skipped that. They also had a cardboard cutout of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to take photos with. Oh, and while I was waiting for the signing to start, one of the Penguin booth workers told me book two was going to be about Flora. I don’t know if that information had been released to the public yet, but I know now. Mwahaha.

Once Rachel’s signing started at 11:30, I got my book signed. I asked her about how the release date coincided with the royal wedding, and she said it was total coincidence since she’d had the book written and planned years prior.

Rachel Hawkins, Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and the back  of my head.

After that signing, there was another Book It with Penguin Teen event, so the roommate and I just stayed hanging out around the Penguin booth, but we didn’t form a line because you aren’t supposed to form lines more than 15 minutes before the event. The workers will yell at you if you try. This time for the Book It giveaway, I chose the tropical option and got an ARC of Seafire.

Unfortunately, or fortunately for our feet, there was nothing else scheduled for us to do until 3 p.m. Thus, we grabbed food and relaxed in the cafeteria for a long couple of hours. We ended up discussing which books we were most excited about over the next year or so. What’s strange, is I don’t think I have one I’m super excited about in 2019. At least, I don’t yet.

When our break was over around 2 p.m., we headed up to the convention floor to wait until Penguin Teen had their mystery ARC drop giveaway. People started an unofficial line because it was too early to form an actual line, and, apparently, it formed in the wrong spot because they ended up moving the line 15 minutes before they started giving out ARCs. It was utter chaos. There were hundreds and hundreds of people trying to get these mystery ARCs. Penguin just should have told everyone what it was, and there would have been less people trying to get the book.

But anyway, my roommate ended up being able to get a copy of the secret ARC, which was Four Dead Queens. I did not. I’ll just borrow it from her though. The security team yelling at people had me quickly running away from all that chaos.

Instead, I waited over in the less chaotic Novl line for an ARC game giveaway starting at 3:30 p.m. Both me and my roommate were hoping to get a copy of Rule. The game was pulling a lollipop out of a stand and seeing what color was scratched on the bottom of the stick. That decided what ARC you got. Thankfully, the Hachette Novl worker allowed you to pick if you wanted a specific one because I ended up getting green when Rule was red. My roommate ended up getting a lollipop without any color on it, so they said it was a wild card and she could pick whatever she wanted. She got Rule as well. So that was a successful event.

Oh, and right before the Rule event, I was given a free copy of a Hachette mystery/thriller book, so that was a nice surprise after the hell that was the Penguin secret ARC drop.

The Red Queen map I managed to grab.

And, that was really our last major event of the day. We decided to stick around until 5 p.m. for various reasons, though. One, because the booths gave away stuff randomly towards the end of the day, and two, because my roommate wanted to stop by Stephanie Garber’s autograph line to see if she could get in last-minute.

While I waited for her to get her ARC copy of Legendary signed, I walked around the convention floor and got two Harlequin romance books, a Red Queen map from Epic Reads, and a Fire & Blood dragon print-out from Penguin.

The Escape Artist by Bard Meltzer

Royals by Rachel Hawkins

Seafire by Natalie Parker (ARC)

Rule by Ellen Goodlett (ARC)

Lady Be Bad by Megan Frampton

Da Rocha’s Convenient Heir by Lynne Graham

So all in all, another mostly successful day. I wish I’d been able to get my own copy of Four Dead Queens, but it wasn’t a big deal. I still managed to get quite a bit on Day 2.

Are you excited about any of these books? If so, which ones?