At age eleven, Julia Raine and her best friend Lois Wilde use a "magic eight ball" to channel the imaginary voice of Mrs. McCracken, a doll who gives advice on topics from romance to interior decoration when she's not exiled to a box in the barn. In high school, Julia gets tips from Jannette, who could be "astral-projected to any high school in Paris or New York, welcomed and ushered to the desk situated in the epicentre of the most popular group of girls." In her twenties, Julia is still looking for the magic answers that will make sense of her world and banish her anxieties about work, family and-most of all-sex.