On Thursday night, I had the amazing privilege of being able to attend a Nicola Yoon signing and an early screening of Everything Everything. While my friends and myself were initially extremely excited…things quickly started to spiral downward. Before you continue reading, I will warn you…this post starts to become a bit of a rant, but I promise you it ends well. It took a lot to finally get back to our happy place, but I promise you that we found our way there eventually. Let’s begin with the recap, shall we?

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The Book Signing

First things first, let’s start with the signing portion of the evening. I would love to be able to tell you that I had an amazing time and that the signing went well, but in all honesty…it was a complete fiasco. Let me break it down:

The rules for the signing weren’t posted anywhere on the Indigo events page or anywhere else for that matter until the late morning/early afternoon on the day of the event. They weren’t even posted on the Indigo events page, but rather on the Facebook group for the specific Indigo location that the event was taking place at.

It wasn’t mentioned until last minute that you could only get one book signed, which resulted in a lot of people carrying around heavy bags of books all day for no reason.

Once we get there, we are placed in groups that will be called out by number which would determine when we could line up to get our book signed. That’s all fine and normal, but what they didn’t mention until the signing started was that only Group 1 got their books personalized. I know this made a lot of people upset, especially the huge Nicola Yoon fans.

The signing started at 5:30 (it actually started late at 5:45) and the movie screening was at 7:00…which Nicola Yoon would be attending, which meant she would only be signing for about an hour and 15 minutes. 

I forgot to mention, the first 50 fans in line got tickets to a special advance screening of Everything Everything. I was fortunate enough to acquire my ticket earlier by the lovely Tina at Indigo Teen so I wasn’t too worried about being one of the first 50.

I ended up being placed in Group 5 while Patty over at Bookish Wanderlove was placed in Group 4. We were worried that if we waited until the end of the signing, as we probably would have some of the last people to get our books signed, we would lose out on good seats at the screening. So we decided to make the sacrifice of not getting our books signed by Nicola Yoon and instead started to head to the theatre.

Once again, I must mention how lovely Tina at Indigo Teen is. She knew that Patty was a huge fan of Nicola Yoon so she kept our books with her at the signing to hopefully get them signed for us while we ran and saved good seats for the three of us. Again, THANK YOU TINA! ❤

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The Film Screening

This is where I’ll stop the mini rant for an intermission. As you can see, I think there was just a huge lack of communication between Warner Brothers, Indigo & Penguin Random House. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the little things that happened that irritated a lot of fans could have been easily avoided if there was just a little more communication.

Now, I warn you…another mini rant is on the horizon here. Just like the signing, the screening was another fiasco all on its own:

Patty and I ran over to the theatre (in the rain) still pretty irritated about the whole signing situation. 

We get to the theatre and we see a sign-in table for those attending the screening filled with goody bags and everything and we think, “Okay, this seems like it is way more organized.” We shouldn’t have spoken too soon.

We get to the actual cinema screening room and I kid you not, there are four Men In Black looking guys, one of them with a metal detector wand. I mean, I get it…it’s an early screening, but even TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) doesn’t have security like this.

Buddy starts metal detecting me and searching my bags. At this point Patty has already been let in. As she’s waiting for me at the entrance, she realizes that I’ve been held back and that something is wrong.

I’m not allowed in because I have a laptop in my backpack. I had just commuted from work. It was 6:00 PM on a Thursday night. So I ask, well what do I do? Is there somewhere I can put it? 

“Unfortunately not. Cineplex and Warner Brothers aren’t responsible. Do you have a car you can put it in?”

Buddy, if I had a car that I had driven here in, do you think that I would be carrying around my backpack and laptop to a movie theatre, or would I have left it in my trunk? 

So of course, I’m left standing outside while Patty saves seats (because Patty is the best and she was all “No, you are getting in!”)

Once AGAIN, we must all praise Tina over at Indigo Teen. Patty texted her and let her know what was going on. We’re not sure if this is a coincidence or not, but the moment we texted her, Man in Black came back over to me and said it was okay now and that I could enter with my laptop. 

I mean, maybe if it was clearly started somewhere that I wasn’t allowed to have it, I could have left it behind at work or something! People were even being turned away for having iPads. This is 2017 people, you would need to confiscate our entire lives if you didn’t want recording devices in the theatre. What about phones?!

Anyway, we finally get in and get our seats and this is the end of mini rant #2.

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Mini Film Review

Let me just tell you, a lot of us we in a bad mood at this point and we were hoping and praying that this movie was going to be good to cure us of our terrible experiences.

I can honestly tell you that I was pleasantly surprised by the film. Not because I expected it to be bad, but just because I wasn’t sure if I was personally going to be a fan of it. I’ll be honest, the ending of the book was not my favourite thing in the world which left me feeling a little indifferent about the whole thing. But I was instantly proven wrong as the film began.

This film was adorable and cute and it made several people audibly “aww” and squeal multiple times. The acting was pretty great as well. While I expected Amandla Stenberg to completely steal the show as Maddy, it was Nick Robinson that completely surprised me as Olly. Not that Amandla Stenberg wasn’t great, because she was, but Nick Robinson just wowed me. He was so natural in his acting ability and I can see him being a HUGE up and comer. I absolutely cannot wait for Simon vs. The Homo-Sapiens Agenda now!

I must say though, and I think a lot of people will agree with me here, some of the best scenes in the movie included an astronaut that manifested itself in Maddy’s imagination. It’s hard to explain without making it sound completely weird, but just know that there’s an astronaut and I loved the scenes that included him.

Overall, the film was a very well done adaptation and if you read the book you won’t be disappointed. They didn’t change much and I got exactly what I was expecting from it.

Side note: Shout out to the Cineplex usher at the end of the movie that shouted “Have a nice night everyone, thank you for Everything Everything!” We all cracked up at that!

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Overall, this wasn’t the most organized event I’ve been to and it definitely caused a few headaches, but ultimately the evening ended on a happy note. I am always grateful to even be able to attend events like this one and I understand that they all can’t be perfect and things happen. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading!

If you would like to know what I thought of the book, you can check out my review here!