The friends have different racial and ethnic backgrounds, but find common ground due to their mutual Latina heritage and have nicknamed themselves the sucias (meaning dirty girls in Spanish) as a joke.

Lauren, who works as a reporter for the Boston Globe, is struggling with an eating disorder and a noncommittal boyfriend but believes that the other women have their lives together.

Rebecca, who runs a successful magazine aimed at Latina women called Ella, is struggling in her relationship with her unemployed, white, pseudo-liberal husband, Brad.

Sara is hiding the fact that her marriage to her childhood sweetheart Roberto is not what it seems and that he has been growing increasingly erratic and violent.

When Roberto discovers that Elisabeth has been to their home he assaults Sara and kicks her in the stomach causing her to miscarry.

The novel closes six months after the start of the book with Usnavys married, Rebecca engaged, Cuicatl, Lauren and Elisabeth in relationships and Sara single but in recovery having launched her own interior design business.