Freddy Carlton knows she should be memorizing lines for The Austen Playbook, a live TV event where viewers choose each scene’s outcome, but her concentration’s been blown. The palatial estate hosting the show is now run by the rude (brilliant) critic who’s consistently slammed her performances of late. James “Griff” Ford-Griffin has a penchant for sarcasm, a majestic nose and the sensitivity of a sledgehammer.

Griff can’t focus with a contagious joy fairy flitting about, especially when Freddy looks at him like that. As he’s reluctantly dragged into her quest to rediscover her passion for the stage and Freddy’s drawn into his research on a legendary theater star, the adage about appearances being deceiving proves abundantly true. It’s the unlikely start of something enormous…but a single revelation about the past could derail it all.