"It sounds kind of strange, but do you know anyone who is really happy? Someone who is exactly where they want to be, who gets up every morning looking forward to what the day will bring? I have a theory... "
Alice Day's theory has led to five strangers meeting in a bar to take part in her experiment. But can this one-time bestselling author, now a mother and housewife, follow through and change their lives for the better (and perhaps her own as well)?
The strangers are a working mother stretched to breaking point, a childless woman whose only solace is fashion, a divorced father, a teacher who hates her job but loves a married man and a widow in her 60s hiding a painful secret.
It is the little things that make life worth living, or so Alice's theory goes. Her aim is to see if the tasks she emails each group member can slowly turn their lives around.
But with any experiment, there are outcomes. The small changes Alice suggests set off much larger ones and a betrayal dramatically affects everyone's lives in ways, that at first glance, are not for the better at all...