Anna's father has made a name for himself as a writer of tear-jerker novels, which have gained a substantial popularity. As a result of his bolstered ego, he now wants his daughter to spend a year studying abroad, at a school in Paris. Anna doesn't want to go, but she finds herself alone in a dormitory in Paris a couple days before the school year begins. She has left her best friend, her younger brother, her mother, and a hopeful boyfriend. Her world seems entirely disrupted. When her next door neighbor invites her over on her first night alone to comfort her, Anna becomes a member of a small circle of close friends who have been attending the school for several years together, most notably Etienne St. Clair, who no one can deny is attractive, from his perfect hair to his perfect teeth to his British accent, to his tidy habits and good manners. Anna finds herself getting swept up in his friendliness towards she and his friends, but especially towards her...or is that her imagination?

As Anna spends time with these friends, she embarks on a journey of growth. Learning French, learning her way around the streets of Paris, and building new friendships with the group of friends she makes in this expensive boarding school. She discovers that there are many small movie theaters all along the streets of Paris, which she hadn't known, but as she loves film and wants to be a film critic, this delights her. She slowly comes to find herself loving Paris and her new friends as the others grow harder to keep in touch with and more distant. St. Clair struggles with his family just as Anna struggles against her father, but where Anna was able to adapt to being sent to boarding school in Paris, it is less clear whether St. Clair be able to come to terms with his own father, who won't let him return to California to live near his mother. Anna finds herself drawn to him, while trying to remember that she is attracted to the boy from back home, a boy she hasn't seen and has only infrequently heard from over the year.