After a string of betrayals and the loss of her legacy, Portia Cuthcart is determined to start a new life with her sisters in Manhattan…and never cook again. But when Portia moves into a dilapidated brownstone on the Upper West Side, she meets 12-year-old Ariel and her widowed father, Gabriel. Soon, a promise made to her sisters forces Portia back into a world of magical food and swirling emotions, where she must confront everything she has been running from.

Emily Barlow believes that her marriage to Sandy Portman is a happy one. But when Sandy dies in a car accident, she finds out that the fairy tale she let herself believe in was far from the truth. While working through her grief, she learns that the man she loved was not even someone she knew.