Book excerpt: From the author of Girl, Boy, and Paranoid Park comes a new novel about the obsessive vortex of falling in love in an impossible time and place. The summer I was seventeen I met this girl… Nick has the best of moms and the worst of moms. On the upside, she’s a distinguished professor and bestselling author. On the downside, she’s a serious alcoholic, with no clue how to relate to her son or husband. Nick, meanwhile, has finished his junior year and needs a break from his stressful home life. What better place to spend the summer than Seaside, Oregon, a sleepy beach town where he can chill out, meet girls, and work at his Uncle’s car wash. Enter local legend, Phoebe Garnet. She’s funny, sexy, but dangerously self-destructive. Suddenly Nick is more in love, more obsessed, more heartsick than he’s ever been in his life. Why does Nick love her so much? Will he survive this obsession? And who can he turn to for help? From the author of the classic novels Girl and Paranoid Park comes a story of the joy, the pain, and the madness of growing up.