Good girl Ivy Beckett has her life mapped out in a neat checklist: Graduate high school, study law at a top university, secure a lucrative career. So far everything's going to plan, so why does her future leave her feeling vaguely nauseous? When an autumn storm sends the seventeen-year-old running for cover inside an old antique store, Ivy is transported to another world. A world that includes an eccentric shop owner and her enigmatic nephew Julian, a gifted artist. If Julian's talent is to see beauty, Ivy was born to capture it in words, and her new friends trigger a wave of creative inspiration that leaves her heart humming like never before. Her parents, however, are not so enamoured. Ivy's dreams are finally starting to crystallise, but she will be forced to make an impossible choice-between the past she's always known, and a future that might only be an illusion.