Alexandra Brennan is doing just fine in a dead end job working for people she hates in New York, until she bumps into an ex in a bar, and he tells her she'll never make it to graduate school in the UK. Never one to let a challenge pass her by, Alex applies and when she gets a place at the University of York, she finds herself on a plane to the other side of the Atlantic, wondering what on earth she's done. Armed with American cigarettes and extra-strength coffee, Alex is ready to face everything Britain has to offer - beer, blokes and more books than she can possibly read in a year. Falling for her lecturer, the divine Sean Douglas, and managing to get a Master's somewhere along the line, Alex realises that instead of running away from home, she might just have found it.