I know I’ve said this before, but I’m very lucky to live near an amazing independent bookstore, Literati, in Ann Arbor. If you’re looking for a small store to support, please consider them! They ship nation wide. Anyway! I saw on their Instagram that they were going to have a Friday night event with Brittany Cavallaro and Mackenzi Lee. I wasn’t familiar with Cavallaro but I’d read the first two books of Lee’s Gentleman’s Guide series (The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy) as well as the accompanying novella (The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky). This tour is supporting the paperback release of the final book in the series, The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks. I hadn’t added this to my TBR, but it’s one I had planed to read. I conferred with my husband that he could watch the babe so off I went!
I got to the store a little early and was poking around the kids section before things got started. The event space was set up but no one was sitting down yet. I wanted to see if I could find a board book about managing emotions for toddlers (please give me recommendations) and I heard an employee talking with two women. I had to assume these were the presenters so I went and sat down. Another person followed soon after but by the time the event started, it was just the two of us! I was surprised, but maybe Friday night is not a popular time to go to a book signing? More people trickled in as it went out, about six in total.
Lee and Cavallaro decided to take a very conversational approach because of the small audience. Both read from their books, Cavallaro from Manifest and Lee from The Winter Soldier: Cold Front. The two seemed to have been on tour together for a few days at least and struck up a conversation easily about historical figures and writing historical fiction. We went down a wonderful tangent about Harry Houdini that I just adored, though I may have been the only one. (Granted, that’s about 17% of the audience, so still good!)
With the small audience, I didn’t want to take any ‘creeper’ photos during the event. Afterward, both signed copies of their backlog. I snagged a copy of Nobleman’s Guide and decided to try out the first in a series of mystery novels from Cavallaro. Both were wonderfully generous with their time and engaged with those of us who were able to make it out. It sounded like they had a few more stops to go together. Cavallaro mentioned living in norther Michigan and I suspect they were heading that way and had stopped by on their way. It was really fun to go to an in-person event again after so long! I think my last one was October 2019. I’m hoping I can go to more again soon!
Until next time, write on
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Taking On a World of Words 
What a shame that the audience was so small as I guess that might put the bookshop off holding similar events in the future. Glad that you had a good time though.
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Sounds like a great event, even though it was a small audience!
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