Perpetually anxious Mal Flowers had A Plan. Do well (enough) at school, edit the student newspaper and ultimately go to the University of Kentucky with their over-achieving sister, and best friend, Maddie. But now the school paper has been shut down, and Mal's hopes for a straightforward senior year have been dashed. Instead of flying under the radar as they'd hoped, they now have to spend every spare moment trying to get The Plan back on track.

Completely out of their comfort zone, Mal agrees to help set up a zine with Emerson - a larger-than-life extrovert that Mal has always been secretly intimated by. In the cosy back room of the local coffee shop, MixxedMedia is born - a publication that will prove to be more challenging and exciting than anything Mal has done before. But can Mal cope with leading a team filled with overpowering personalities? And as sparks start to fly both on and off the page, will they learn that not everything in life has to go according to plan?