Sara Holland's Everless NYC Launch Party Recap

So last Tuesday I attended Sara Holland’s launch event for her debut book, Everless.

The signing set up with extra Everless copies.

Now, I don’t know a whole heck of a lot about this book except that it’s a YA fantasy with a gorgeous cover and it’s published by HarperCollins. And ya’ll should know by now that I love me some HarperTeen titles. Thus, I decided attending this signing was a must.

Originally, this event was planned for Thursday night, but that was the night of the #bombcyclone, so it was rescheduled, which kind of sucked for me, because I was fine on Thursday, but I got sick on Saturday and was still sick on Tuesday. Regardless, I had fun at the event. Oh, and before I get into the recap too much, please be aware that my pictures suck. I was too ill to really work at taking good photos.

McNally Jackson's ceiling of bookish torture. 😱😭

I’d never been to the McNally Jackson bookstore before. Since I moved to NYC, I’ve always gone to signing events at Books of Wonder, so this was a new experience. McNally has this creepy book graveyard ceiling that will continue to give me nightmares. I mean, just look at it!

Cool time capsules.

As for the event itself, there were hourglass-shaped cookies, cheese and cracker plates, and these cool glass time capsules. I wanted to take one, but I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to, and I didn’t know what I’d do with it anyway.

The backdrop of the speaking event.

The bookstore had a cute setup going on as well. Behind the stools where Sara and her MC who moderated the event, author Zoraida Cordova, sat were copies of Everless. On the windowsill area were some copies of Zoraida’s book, Labyrinth Lost, which I still haven’t read because of its creeptastic cover. It just looks too scary/icky for me. But Zoraida seems like a lovely person.

Sara (left) and Zoraida (right). There were too many tall people in my way. I couldn't get a decent shot.

There were also a lot of other authors in attendance. Adam Silvera was there, along with some 2018 debut authors like Laura Sebastian (Ash Princess), Mark Oshiro (Anger is a Gift), and Melissa Albert (The Hazel Wood). There was some good-natured ribbing between all of the authors in attendance.

Zoraida and Sara played a fandom game where they would say what fandom they were in or answered questions based on a particular fandom, and then the audience would vote on which choice won (aka was more popular). For example, Sara was Team Sam from Supernatural while Zoraida was Team Dean. Guess which one I agreed with?

Sara also answered some audience questions, like which Hogwarts Houses her characters would be in. Apparently, Jules would be in Gryffindor and Roan Hufflepuff. Because I have yet to read the book, I guess I’ll just have to agree with her. ;)

Sarah also mentioned that Jules would get along with Mare from Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series and, if she had to be in a relationship with a character not in her world, Jules would fall in love with Peeta from The Hunger Games.

AND, I almost forgot to mention that Sara’s parents were at the launch event! They were super cute! My roommate and I sat pretty close to them, so we saw her mom and dad taking pictures and asking questions about their hometown in Minnesota and how it inspired Sara’s book. It was totally adorable.

Sara signing a book.

Now, on to what happened during the signing portion of the event. First of all, it was chaos. The bookstore didn’t have a numbering system for line order. They also didn’t hand out sticky notes to write names in for personalization purposes. That meant that whenever I made my way over to Sara, I had to tell her my name myself. Normally, this would not be a problem; however, it was super loud in there due to all of the people talking, and I couldn’t talk loudly because I was nasally.

Rachelle - Happy reading! 💗 Sara Holland

Thus, I just ended up being an awkward mess trying to get poor Sara to understand what I was saying. We even tried to have a conversation about us both living in NYC, but it was, again, an awkward time for the both of us. I’m a naturally quiet speaker, so the loudness and my sickness didn’t help matters.

Well, that’s my recap of the event. It was a fun one. I chuckled quite a bit. I also learned that there are a lot of new releases coming out by NYC authors. Guess that means more signings for me?