Claire Vincent is a misunderstood and confused girl who has no friends her own age. The kids at school think she’s weird, and she’d rather be left alone than have to deal with their rude stares and hurtful comments. Her only friend is her bold and adventurous grandmother Millie, who’s traveled the world and done everything from going on safaris to flying planes. Claire wants to be just like her, but that’s much harder for her than anyone realizes. She’s not courageous enough to even try – and so she remains a loner, burying her nose in books and escaping into the imaginative magical worlds she reads about.

But when a new kid, Matt, moves next door, she finds herself slowly drawn into the world of the living, despite her misgivings. Matt would do anything to please her, and she finds herself depending on him for everything – friends, social life, and recognition. But it’s a dependence she eventually grows to despise because it just makes her own weakness that much more apparent. She yearns for more – real magic in her life, to sweep her away from the land of the boring.

When Claire’s father decides to throw her grandmother a surprise seventy-fifth birthday party despite her grandmother’s vehement aversion to celebrating birthdays, Claire finds out that a magical life might not be as desirable as she naïvely believed. An unexpected guest at her grandmother’s party – Jack, a handsome boy new to town – seems to know Gran very well. Claire soon discovers her grandmother has been keeping a very big secret – and that secret might just be the perennially mysterious Jack.