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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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THE NERDY AND THE DIRTY

Brad Gottfred

A startlingly real story about boy meets girl and first love, told through their uniquely up-close-and-personal alternating points of view.
On the same day, unbeknownst to each other, popular Penelope Lupo and awkward Benedict Pendleton make two life changing proclamations. Penelope promises to no longer hide her true thoughts and passions while Benedict vows to leave behind his isolated academic life to find his first girlfriend. Yet stating your desires and achieving them are entirely different prospects. Penelope soon realizes that expressing herself may risk losing her perfect boyfriend Paul (and the valued social status with him) while Benedict not only gets rejected by every girl he asks out but pushes away his best (and only) friend Robert in the process.

Though they had been virtual strangers for years, Penelope and Benedict experience several bizarre encounters that leave each confused between the little they have in common and the growing attraction between them. Over Christmas vacation, they are both dragged by their families to the same remote lake resort in the northern woods of Wisconsin. Forced to communicate, they begin discovering that Penelope’s hidden passions and Benedict’s bold idiosyncrasies are exactly what they each need. A friendship blossoms fast into something much deeper, and when their families find out, they forbid them from seeing each other again.

Penelope and Benedict are left with only two choices. Try to forget the magical bond discovered between them and return to their previous familiar and safe lives with their families and long held high school roles intact. Or risk everything and everyone to embrace the one-of-a-kind love they found along the path of their own personal revolutions.

Brad (B.T.) Gottfred is an actor, director, playwright, and author. His debut YA novel FOREVER FOR A YEAR was published in 2015.
Available products
Book

Published 2016-11-17 by Henry Holt

Book

Published 2016-11-17 by Henry Holt

Comments

THE NERDY AND THE DIRTY was a finalist for Audible's Best Audiobooks of the Year in the Romance Category.

This high school love story is genuine and honest. The teens’ voices ring true, authentically showing how teens feel about themselves, parents, and other well-meaning adults. Pen and Benedict’s stories are not for the faint of heart, however; The Nerdy and the Dirty deals frankly and in great detail with family relationships and with teenage sexuality.

Benedict and Penelope alternate as narrators, and the novel is in turns romantic, explicit, funny and painful as it explores how very hard it is to be your own true self amid pressures of parental and peer expectations.

Readers will cheer as these two endearing, unique, and believably voiced characters learn to finally be real—with themselves, with each other, and with the world.