Aisha Saeed & Becky Albertalli in Liverpool

I had the most bookish day on leap year possible. It was filled with book shopping, book chats, bookish friends and events. Myself and Lois made our way to Liverpool for the day for a bookish best friend day, and honestly it was absolutely wonderful and incredibly pure.

We started our day off with a museum before a little book shopping. We both wanted a bookish day with each other, and we pretty much got that.

After exploring a couple of comic book shops, and the Oxfam bookshop, me and Lois took ourselves to Waterstones. Honestly, i want to say that i really stuck to my book ban, but that’s just simply not true. We had a great time wandering around and having a really good look around instead of a mad dash to the YA section and out again. I found some titles i really wasn’t expecting to see and the whole hour of browsing really made me happy.

The rest of the day consisted of reading, eating and book events!

The reason we went to Liverpool for the day was to attend the Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed book event for Yes, No, Maybe So. This is a book that has been highly anticipated for me and i could not wait to get my hands on it. When i found out the authors were in fact touring for this book, i got a little too excited and me and Lois immediately booked tickets to see them.

Although it felt unusually quiet for two authors that are quite well known, it was an incredibly interesting talk and gave a lot of insight in to how Becky and Aisha write together. More so, listening to them talk about their friendship and how they developed their characters in Yes, No, Maybe So made me completely fall in love with the book before i even picked it up.

You can tell from seeing them together that they would work easily as an author pair, as their friendship really means a lot to them. We also got a little bit of information about what they’re currently working on and upcoming releases are. Without a doubt they’re two authors that i will always auto-buy.

Afterwards, we had the chance to meet Aisha and Becky and have our books signed. Becky was absolutely lovely as usual (she even remembered who we were, and i couldn’t actually believe it), and it was such a pleasure to meet Aisha and tell her how much i adored her books.

As discussed, i did buy a couple of books whilst in Liverpool, here’s what i picked up:

• Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo
• Her Body & Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
• Do You Dream Of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh
• The Hand On The Wall by Maureen Johnson
• A Heart So Fierce and Broken by Brigid Kemmerer
• Grief Angels by David Owen
• Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales
• Yes, No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli & Aisha Saeed