Event Recap: An Evening with Emily Giffin and Elle Canada

I'm super behind with a two of my bookish event recaps. Like, "this particular event happened in June and it's now September" behind. Oops! On June 16, I, and a whole bunch of other book lovers, crowded into a bar in Toronto to attend An Evening with Emily Giffin and Elle Canada. It was an awesome girls night out!

I try to make every Toronto visit into a social event so I was happy that two of my favourite Toronto authors, Lydia Laceby and Samantha Stroh Bailey, would be attending the event with me. It had been ages since I had seen them and this event was perfect for catching up while having a bookish time.

When we got into the event, which was held at The Citizen, we handed over our tickets and were given our swag bags in exchange. We could hardly wait to dive in to find out what we had been given! First order of business: free drinks! We could have wine or a specialty cocktail (and, of course, I didn't get a picture nor can I remember what was in it other than vodka...it was good though). We got two tickets so I tried both!

After getting our drinks, we decided to get our free Pandora bracelets and charm. Obviously, since it was a freebie, the bracelet isn't one of their high end ones but it's still very nice! I liked how they did the charms for this event - everyone got a charm with their astrological symbol on it. Cute idea, no? (I'm a Gemini, in case you're curious.)

Pic of a pic. Not ideal :)

There was a photo booth up at the Pandora station as well so we, of course, had to get a picture! While Sam and Lydia got one of just the two of them I did my blogger duty and pimped their books to the photographer!

We realized that the seats were filling up quickly so we hurried to find a place to sit (there were not enough seats to accommodate everyone and, even though we got seats, we didn't appreciate that there wasn't enough room).

Emily Giffin finally came out, talked/was interviewed for awhile, and then answered some questions from the audience. A typical sort of book event! She mentioned that she has never written anything autobiographical or based any characters on herself but Shea, the heroine of her latest book The One and Only, ended up being a lot like her. She said Shea's voice flowed more than any other character.

At the time of the event I was still trying to figure out what, exactly, I wanted to do with my life so I found this story meaningful: when Giffin was leaving the law office she worked at to move to London to work on Something Borrowed, a partner said, "Good luck with that whole writing thing" and she thought she'd die if she had to go back. She eventually realized that there was no shame in that as she wouldn't fail because she had tried. 

Other things to note...Giffin did say that she will write a sequel to Where We Belong (which makes me SO happy) and that she was currently at work on the Something Borrowed script (yay! More John Krasinksi!).

There were only a couple of brave males in the crowd who were there supporting their ladies (I think
the Argos cheerleaders thrilled the guys more than the rest of the event!). One guy was sitting next to me and during the interview portion of the night he pulled out his girlfriend's copy of the novel and started reading! Too cute.

Even though I'd met Giffin before, I decided to wait in line to get my complimentary copy of The One and Only personalized (each swag bag contained a signed copy). Definitely worth it to have another signed book in my collection! (Just realized I don't have a pic of the book and it's now at my mom's waiting for her to read it!)

Overall, the event was a pretty good one. I think I enjoyed meeting up with the girls and being in the city more than the actual event itself (you know when an author's personality doesn't thrill you like another author's might? Yeah...that...) but I'm still happy I went. The swag bag, which included delicious cookies, definitely helped ;)

Stay tuned for another couple of event recaps in the next few weeks as I play catch up :)