There are three things in her life that Stella truly hates: 1) Her Mother 2) Manhattan's Upper East Side 3) Private schools, which she seems to have a habit of running away from. To Stella, living with her mother in the Upper East Side isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially since her mother couldn't care less about her. While Stella was sent to private school after private school, her mother is busy dominating the fashion world and barely batted an eye every time Stella would run away. She always ended up back in New York eventually anyway, so what did it matter? But Stella has dreams, dreams that are probably too big for her mother to handle, so the obvious solution is to run away. She loads up her convertible and drives to California in search of her superstar father. After having her dreams seemingly crushed yet again, Stella finds the one person she never thought she'd see again: her brother. And he and his friends know exactly how to help Stella out. Now, with the help of her "rockstar" brother, a jealous ex-girlfriend, a bad-boy artist, and a cute photographer, Stella learns a thing or two about life, love, and standing up for yourself.