"The right thing never just happens; you have to make it happen."

Morgan knows her parents left her in boarding school so they could travel the world, which is why hardly anything changes when they're killed in an accident during her freshman year at Fairfield. But every orphan needs a guardian, and Morgan's is her uncle Tom, a famous and somewhat eccentric author.

Tom's New York City apartment has plenty of space for Morgan, and her room is the nicest one she's ever seen, but her uncle, uncomfortable suddenly raising a fourteen-year-old girl, seems distant and preoccupied. Alone in an unfamiliar world, Morgan imagines what her school roommate, the popular and sarcastic Trinck, would think of everything. Would she approve of Morgan's newly discovered love of reading or the friends she makes in New York? Slowly, Morgan makes a place for herself that is all her own and reflects on the person she is becoming—whether Trinck would like it or not.