Dismayed at first when her adoptive parents send her to another town to help her aunt, Hillary finds she can still search for a "total guy" during her seventeenth summer.

Hillary Germaine had plans for her seventeenth summer. She was going to find a “total” guy and have a magical romance. To her horror, on her seventeenth birthday, just before the summer began, her parents gave her a plane ticket to Oregon. She left her plush existence in Iowa to help Aunt Fay, owner of the Rainsong Inn. She protested, but then decided to go when her adoptive parents wanted to get rid of her. The summer, it seemed, was a test to discover how well she could make it on her own.