Erin Randel's intense life comprises captaining the varsity swim team, honors classes, last-chair cello for a prestigious youth orchestra, a largely untapped passion for astronomy, and the void left when her grandmother died. Her mother has Erin's future fully planned, too: Ivy League, medical school, and a ?successful? life. But two days before Erin?s seventeenth birthday, the arrival of three championship swimmers triggers demotion from the varsity team, a lost captainship, and a gaping hole in both her college applications and identity. At a party later that night, Erin drinks heavily and vomits on her fabulous boyfriend, Ben, in the most embarrassing way possible. Partygoers catch most of her explosion on video, and it spreads through social media. Erin?s social life collapses immediately, leaving her lonely, vulnerable, and unsure how she?ll ever attain the goals she?s set for herself. When Erin confesses all to her mother, she and school officials decide Erin can save her résumé with study abroad. New Zealand would allow her swimming capabilities to shine and foreign exchange would portray her as "well rounded." While foreign study on New Zealand's gorgeous South Island is supposed to be a way to rescue her flagging Ivy League prospects and wait out her social exile, it soon becomes so much more.

