The earlier novel followed a group of Catholic schoolgirls from a bleak town in the west coast of Scotland on a disastrous day trip to Edinburgh to participate in a national choir competition.

The story, set in 2001, starts at London's Gatwick Airport, where Manda, Chell, Kylah, Kay, Finn and her friend from university, Ava have met to go on a joint holiday.

Much of the narrative takes place in the airport's lounges, bars and near by hotels that the group are confined to for several days (although they do break out to the Kent countryside), as they attempt to go abroad.

[3] The Observer said that the plot was compelling: "as the women reacquaint themselves with each other, the reader is rapidly drawn into their lives and the complex web of their relationships through their vivid conversation".

[5] The Herald said that Manda was "the most vivid, aggravating lynchpin in recent Scottish fiction", but felt of the book that "tone ... is a problem throughout ... and some passages are woefully out of key".