Books

Read An Exclusive Excerpt From Perfect by Cecelia Ahern (#CONTEST)

Books. We love them. They are like food for our soul. We devour them. We can’t get enough of them. You may remember last year, we were all about Flawed, but Cecelia Ahern. Yes, we were drawn in by the fact that it was the author of P.S. I Love You, but stayed for the page turning book that captivated us.

Now, it’s time for the sequel to Flawed, entitled, Perfect. We’re intrigued, cause what is really perfect? But we’re going to find out in the sequel. We are excited to give you an exclusive excerpt from Perfect, due on shelves, April 4th.

Here’s the synopsis –

Celestine North lives in a society that demands perfection. After she was branded Flawed by a morality court, Celestine’s life has completely fractured–all her freedoms gone.

Since Judge Crevan has declared her the number one threat to the public, she has been a ghost, on the run with Carrick–the only person she can trust.

But Celestine has a secret–one that could bring the entire Flawed system crumbling to the ground. A secret that has already caused countless people to go missing.

Judge Crevan is gaining the upper hand, and time is running out for Celestine. With tensions building, Celestine must make a choice: save just herself or to risk her life to save all Flawed people.

And, most important of all, can she prove that to be human in itself is to be Flawed?

And now for the exclusive excerpt –

Dahy is making another bad decision right now, colluding with Granddad in hiding me. Granddad could get a minimum of six months’ prison time for aiding a Flawed, but as a Flawed man, helping another Flawed, I dread to think of what Dahy’s punishment could be. As a Flawed person you think life couldn’t be any worse for you until the Guild turns on your family and uses them to inflict further punishment and pain.

The three of us stare down into the rectangular pit in the ground. I hear doors slam—multiple doors— and I imagine a Whistle blower army in their red combat gear and black boots. They will be with us in a matter of minutes. I lower myself into the pit and lie down.

“Cover me,” I say.

Granddad pauses, but Dahy tugs at the sheet and gets it in motion.

Granddad’s hesitancy could cost me.

Once the sheet is over me, they start adding the wood and moss that I gathered from the forest that morning. Never mind digging my own grave: I’d prepared the coffin, too.

The footsteps draw near.

“We need to get to Carrick immediately,” Granddad says quietly, and I agree silently.

I hear the crunching of boots on soil.

“Cornelius,” Mary May says suddenly, and my heart pounds. Everything about her terrifies me, a woman so heartless she reported her entire family to the Guild for immoral practices in their family business, in retaliation for her sister stealing her boyfriend. She has always been present for the searches of the farm house, but now it seems she has returned with an army. Or at least twelve others.

“Mary May,” Granddad says gruffly. “Siren run out of batteries today?”

Another stick lands on top of me, hard. Thrown into the pit casually to throw her off the scent, no doubt. It lands right on my stomach and I fight the urge to groan and move.
Mary May doesn’t do banter, or humor, or conversation. What she says goes. “What’s that?”

“A food pit,” Granddad says.

The two of them are standing over me, on my left- hand side. I feel logs land on me from the other side, which means Dahy is still here.

“Which is?”

“Have you never heard of a food pit? I thought a country girl from the yellow meadows like you would know all about it.”

“No. I don’t.” Her words are clipped. She doesn’t like that he knows where she’s from. Granddad enjoys doing that, putting her off, showing her he knows things about her. It’s subtle, and it’s jolly in tone, but the undertones are threatening.

“Well, I dig a hole, put a sheet on the base. Cover it with logs. Light them. Then when it’s smoldering, I add the food and cover it with soil. Twenty- four hours later the food is cooked in the ground it grew from. Absolutely delicious. No food like it. Learned it from my pops, who learned it from his.”

“That’s a coincidence,” Mary May says. “Digging a hole just before we arrive. You wouldn’t be hiding anything in there, would you?”

“No coincidence when I wasn’t expecting you today. And it’s an annual ritual, ask anyone on the farm. Isn’t that right, Dahy?” Another bunch of logs and moss land on my body.

Ow.

“That’s right, boss,” Dahy says.

“You expect me to believe a Flawed?” The disgust at even being spoken to by one is clear in her voice.

There’s a long silence. I concentrate on my breathing. The sheet hasn’t been flattened on all sides, air creeps in, but not enough. This hiding place was a ridiculous idea, but it was my ridiculous idea. I’m regretting it now. I could have taken my chances hiding in the forest— maybe Mary May could have gotten lost in there forever, too, the two of us hunting and hiding from each other for the rest of our lives.

I hear Mary May slowly walking around the pit, perhaps she can see my body shape, perhaps not. Perhaps she is about to pull it all off me and reveal me right now. I concentrate on my breathing, every thing is too heavy on me, I wish they’d stop piling on the wood.

“That wood’s for burning, then?” she asks.

“Yes,” says Granddad.

“So set it on fire,” she says.

So good, right? We can’t wait.

We’re giving you a chance to win a Hardcover of Flawed, and then when we get our Perfect ARC’s we’ll get you one of those too.

All you have to do is tweet us –