The free-verse novel follows ninth-grader Sophie Stein as she struggles through the daily grind of being a freshman in high school, her romantic crushes, and her family life.

The companion book What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know, written from the perspective of Sophie's boyfriend Robin (Murphy), was published in 2007.

At the start of the novel, Sophie finds herself dumped by her current boyfriend Lou, then immediately falls into a new relationship with Dylan, a boy considered the height of masculine beauty by her friends.

Now on her own, in real life, she encounters an outcast classmate, Robin Murphy, at the local art museum and is astonished to realize that while he is not physically attractive or liked by her friends, she falls in love with him.

The book received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, "Drawing on the recognizable cadences of teenage speech, Sones poignantly captures the tingle and heartache of being young and boy-crazy".