Josie attends a Catholic girls high school where she is disillusioned with the cliques and social politics of her snobby peers.

Her usually sophisticated, outspoken demeanour is challenged when she is overcome with the pressures of her final year of high school: the suicide of her friend, John Barton, and meeting her estranged father, Michael Andretti, who is in Sydney on a business trip.

She confides in a young man with a bad reputation, Jacob Coote, and they slowly develop a romantic relationship.

The world premiere of the play Looking for Alibrandi, based on the novel, was created and performed by the PACT Youth Theatre in Sydney in 1995.

[3] Playwright and comedian Vidya Rajan created another stage adaptation of the novel, which was directed by Stephen Nicolazzo in a production that played at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne in July 2022 and then at the Belvoir in Sydney in October.