"My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I'm allergic to the world. I don't leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He's tall, lean and wearing all black -- black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking...

It tells the unlikely love story of Maddy, a smart, curious and imaginative eighteen-year-old who due to an illness cannot leave the protection of the hermetically sealed environment within her house, and Olly, the boy next door who won't let that stop them. Maddy is desperate to experience the much more stimulating outside world, and the promise of her first romance.