Last weekend, cheap I was able to attend an awesome event. It was my first book event in months, featuring one of my favorite books of all time, and the movie based on it, with my favorite actress and celebrity crush.

Oh yes, I’m talking about Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver and the movie starring the one and only Zoey Deutch.

This event was exciting to me for three reasons. One, I absolutely love love love love love love this book. It stays with me even years after I’ve read it. Two, I adore Zoey Deutch so much, as you all know. Three, nearly four years ago exactly, I met Lauren Oliver for the first time and we talked about how beat up my copy of Before I Fall was and how she said they were working so hard to make that book a movie.

Four years later, and its about to release in theaters. I’m so excited.

The event was held at the Barnes and Noble in Santa Monica. Appearing at the event was Lauren Oliver, the author, Ry Russo-Young, the director, Zoey Deutch (Samantha), Halston Sage (Lindsay), Kian Lawley (Rob), Medalion Rahimi (Elody) and Cynthy Wu (Ally).

I loved every bit of the discussion. I loved that they focused on what made me love this book so much. Its so hard to love Samantha in the beginning of the book. She’s a mean girl, best friends with the meanest girl in the school and its hard to stomach. I was definitely not a part of that in high school. I was definitely the Juliet in that scenario. But I loved how they talked about the love of family in there, the strength of friendship, the diversity in the casting, the idea of loss. Its what makes this book so great and I was so glad to see that the cast really understood that.

I want to come back to the diversity. I loved how different Zoey, Medalion, Halston and Cynthy were. I loved seeing how diverse they were and how, even though their characters aren’t the greatest people, there are so many reasons behind that and they understood that. They really understood their characters and they understood the strength of their friendship. I really believe in that part of the book.

After the discussion, there was the signing. All of the actors were so nice, but obviously it was meeting Zoey again that was the tip top awesomeness of the experience, especially since she made it so great.

When I walked up to Zoey, I was so nervous. You’d think I’d be used to meeting people by now, but I’m just awful lol especially when it comes to my crush. She was so sweet though, making sure to make note of my name and asked me how I was. I had no idea what to say so I told her that we met a few years ago at the Vampire Academy meet and greet and that she told me she liked my Divergent tattoo, but I needed a Vampire Academy tattoo. Well I ended up getting one a few weeks later but obviously didn’t see her until now. I showed her my tattoo and she FREAKED out, in a total good way, and everyone else at the table started noticing and she gave me a high five and told me she loved me (lol) and asked if she could take a selfie on her phone with me, which, uh, duh. Later, it appeared on her instagram story and basically made my whole day, if not my whole life.

Afterwards, we headed to the movie theater, where we were able to see an early screening of the movie. They handed us free roses, which have a pretty big significance in the book, and its always nice to receive flowers.

I genuinely enjoyed the movie. This is a book that I absolutely love and I am always scared that a movie (or tv show) will not do the story justice but I genuinely believe that this movie did. Not only did it capture the very essence of the movie, hitting all the major emotions, but it was also the most genuine adaptation that I’ve seen in such a long time. I loved it. I didn’t feel like that sort of WTF feeling that you tend to get when you watch a movie adaptation based on one of your favorite books. I thought the actors did an incredible job of capturing the characters. I thought Zoey was stand out as Samantha and I thought everyone who took part in creating this movie really did this book justice. I can’t wait until it comes out in theaters so that I can see it again. It deserves all the revenue that we can send its way. Besides just being a great adaptation, I do think its a genuinely good movie too.

Free poster!

Aw look, this copy is brand new and not all beat up like my other copy! I love them both though!

All in all, I had an amazing time, meeting the cast and seeing the movie for the first time. It felt great to be back at a book event again and hopefully I will be back at more soon!

Until then, happy reading!