Imagine a world where all your crimes are written on your face.

In Alannah's world, every moral choice she makes changes her physical appearance—for better or worse. Any good deed increases beauty, while any misdeed leaves an immediate, ugly mark. Naturally, she wants to be as good and beautiful as possible—until her habit of finding ways around the rules leads her to discover that people have found devious ways to abuse this system.

When she leaves home for a magazine internship in Colorado Springs, Alannah finds her desire to be good challenged in unexpected ways. Over the course of her internship, she has surprising encounters with homeless people, gangsters, politicians, policemen, cute coworkers, illegal makeup traffickers, and more. Before she knows it, she's drawn into a social conflict that endangers not only her entire concept of what it means to be good but also the lives of those she cares about.