Spotlight & Giveaway: Meet the Benedettos by Katie Cotugno

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Katie Cotugno to HJ!

Hi Katie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Meet the Benedettos!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Every family is complicated, and the Benedettos are no exception. A few years after a reality TV show skyrocketed them to pop-culture fame, the five twentysomething sisters are living together in their parents’ crumbling McMansion, nearly broke and teetering toward rock-bottom. Lilly Benedetto is all too aware that her family is a spectacle, but she’s focused on holding herself and her family together, social relevancy be damned. But when Charlie Bingley, the dashing star of Captain Fantastic, moves into their L.A. neighborhood with his friend Will Darcy in tow, it looks as if the Benedettos’ fortunes are about to turn around at last.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

Lilly thinks about her Honda sitting busted at the mechanic’s. She wonders where her family will go if they have to leave Pemberly Grove. She imagines the last days of Rome, everyone washing their hair and pitting their peaches and falling in love while an empire fell all around them. Then she turns around and walks back home.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

I’ve had the idea for this book in my back pocket for years, but was sort of waiting until I felt confident enough as a writer too. handle a big, unruly cast of characters who all had something to say–and loudly!

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

The first time Will and Lilly meet, they forget to be anything but their genuine selves for a sliver of a moment, and really see each other–their fear, their awkwardness, their discomfort. They’ve got a genuine–and physical!–connection right off the bat, even if they both do their best to forget about it more or less immediately

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I mean, I love nothing more than writing a makeout, and Lilly and Will’s encounter the night of the party at Charlie’s house was particularly fun to write:

Lilly shakes her head. She feels irritated and itchy, and she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t even like him, she reminds herself firmly. He’s the actual, literal worst, except for the part where she can’t stop looking at him, stealing quick hungry glances out of the corner of her eye. He has three tiny freckles on the side of his neck, like a constellation. His eyelashes are long as a girl’s. “I got it,” she says.
“No, really.”
“It’s fine,” she says snottily. “I know you think I’m a useless, spoiled princess, but I promise I can rinse a dish.”
Will rolls his eyes. “That’s not—” He reaches for it, the full length of his body pressing against hers, and it’s like she’s an electric car that’s suddenly been plugged in to charge after a thousand miles, everything inside her vrooming to life—dashboard flickering, a mechanical rev. Both of them freeze. They stay that way for a moment, like they’re playing chicken. Lilly knows when she’s starting down a dare.
“Can I ask you something?” he murmurs. His face is very, very close. “Why do you keep following me around trying to kiss me when you hate me so much?”

Readers should read this book….

if they’re looking for messy, bighearted characters, a sexy, complicated romance, and a love letter to both Jane Austen and the carnival of modern celebrity.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’ve always wanted to be the kind of author who can write a bunch of different things, and I’ve got a handful of projects in various stages of development–a chapter book for young readers, a YA romance, a literary thriller (maybe?) and my women’s fiction follow-up. My brain feels very full these days!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One US reader will win a signed finished copy of MEET THE BENEDETTOS

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Do you feel like the media’s treatment of the Benedettos is fair, or even invited? Why or why not?

 
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Excerpt from Meet the Benedettos:

When he finally bursts back out into the garden he nearly crashes right into Caroline, who’s standing on the grass with a glass of white wine in her hand, mouth slightly agape. “Were you just in there with Lilly Benedetto?” she accuses, pointing at him with one manicured finger.

“I—no. Yes?” Will confesses before he can think better of it. His head is still swimming pleasantly, which is why it takes him a beat to register the dark, vaguely dangerous hilarity in her voice. “Why, who’s Lilly Benedetto?”

Caro laughs. “See, this is why I love you, William. You’re like a weird homeschooled child who reads the book of Revelation for fun and thinks the devil lives in his boom box.” Caroline grins. “The Benedettos are a bunch of reality show trash bags who got famous for being famous and now spend their one wild and precious life getting in drunken catfights at the openings of not-quite-exclusive nightclubs and shilling collagen powder on TikTok.”

Will feels the horror blooming like black mold inside him. “I—what?” he asks. “No.”

“Did I just hear something about Will fooling around with Lilly Benedetto in the hedge maze?” Lucy asks delightedly, hurrying up to them with a glass of champagne in one hand and Charlie at her heels.

“He didn’t know who she was,” Caro says, in his defense. “But now he’s going to go dunk his penis in bleach as a precautionary measure.”

“We didn’t—I mean—” Will sputters. “My penis is fine.”

“That’s a relief,” Lucy says. “Is Lilly the one who was married to the anti-vax football player for a week and then got an annulment? Or the one who had the skincare line and then all the products turned out to be made of ground-up animal bones from Mexico?”

“You guys are mean,” Charlie protests. “I just talked to June for like half an hour, and she’s a total sweetheart.”

“Oh, everyone is meeting the Benedettos this fine evening, I see.” Caroline shakes her head. “June’s the one who threw the unironic Gatsby party where everyone got listeria and had to be hospitalized,” she reminds Lucy. “Lilly is the one who had the tacky boyfriend, the Pepperoni Pirate or whatever from the dad’s pizza place? The one who died from, like, doing whippets or eating Tide Pods?”

“Oh my god, I had forgotten all about that,” Lucy says, shaking her head. “Better watch yourself around common household chemicals, Will.”

Will bites back a grimace, but barely; if there’s one thing he truly hates, it’s drawing unnecessary attention to himself. In that case, you picked a weird line of work, Charlie always says, and Will never quite knows how to explain that for him acting is the opposite thing entirely, that the main appeal of the entire endeavor is disappearing into someone else—the knowledge that, if he does his job right, people will forget he exists altogether. The worst part of being in the hospital—besides all the other worst parts about being in the hospital—was the feeling of everyone looking at him all the time.

“Didn’t she give them to him or something?” Lucy is asking now, pulling her phone out of her purse to confirm. Charlie has already been absorbed back into the party, charming a pair of washed-up sitcom stars across the patio. Will wishes he could evaporate into thin air. “The Tide Pods? I’m trying to remember the story.”

“Did you guys have a chance to cover that during your time together in the hedge maze, Will?” Caroline asks teasingly. “Or were you otherwise engaged?”

Will scowls. “Can you lay off, please?” he asks, knowing he sounds peevish. His entire body feels like it’s on fire, his skin burning with shame and regret. “I can promise you I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near her if I had known she was a reality show trash bag who killed her boyfriend with Tide Pods.”

“It was heroin, actually,” says a pleasant voice behind him. “And he got it all on his own.”

Will feels the heat drain abruptly out of his body, his blood turning to seawater in his veins. When he turns around there’s Lilly with her shoulders back and feet planted on the bluestone, her expression haughty and regal and—oh, fuck him—possibly just the tiniest bit hurt. Her lips are swollen from kissing. Will can feel that his are, too.

“That’s not—” he begins, then completely fails to follow it up in any meaningful way. If he was ashamed of himself a minute ago it’s nothing compared to the way he feels now: the nearly irresistible urge to find the nearest luxury vehicle and lie down directly in front of it. “I didn’t—” He breaks off again. Lucy is staring down at the patio. Caroline clears her throat.

Lilly fixes them with a reality-show smile that’s nothing short of luminous, warm and winning and profoundly insincere. “Welcome to Pemberly Grove, neighbors,” she tells them, then lifts her middle finger in their direction and stalks back into the house.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Every family is complicated, and the Benedettos are no exception. A few years after a reality TV show skyrocketed them to pop-culture fame, the five twentysomething sisters are living together in their parents’ crumbling McMansion, nearly broke and teetering toward rock-bottom. Lilly Benedetto is all too aware that her family is a spectacle, but she’s focused on holding herself and her family together, social relevancy be damned. But when Charlie Bingley, the dashing star of Captain Fantastic, moves into their L.A. neighborhood with his friend Will Darcy in tow, it looks as if the Benedettos’ fortunes are about to turn around at last.
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Meet the Author:

Katie Cotugno is the New York Times bestselling author of eight messy, complicated feminist YA love stories, as well the adult novels Birds of California and Meet the Benedettos. She is also the co-author, with Candace Bushnell, of Rules for Being a Girl. Her books have been honored by the Junior Library Guild, the Bank Street Children’s Book Committee, and the Kentucky Association of School Librarians, among others, and translated into more than fifteen languages. Katie is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Mississippi Review, and Argestes, as well as many other literary magazines. She studied Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College and received her MFA in Fiction at Lesley University. She lives in Boston with her family.
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