Thirty-three-year-old Abby Stern has made it to a happy place. True, she still has gig jobs instead of a career, and the apartment where she’s lived since college still looks like she’s just moved in. But she’s got good friends, her bike, and her bicycling club in Philadelphia. She’s at peace with her plus-size body—at least, most of the time—and she’s on track to marry Mark Medoff, her childhood sweetheart, a man she met at the weight-loss camp that her perpetually dieting mother forced her to attend.

Senatorial favorite Ida Berkowitz is headed for a win. Raised by a hardworking widowed mother, she’s authentic, relatable, and down-to-earth. Voters love her. Polls promise victory. Then her campaign manager utters four awful words: Who is Marissa Schuyler? She had almost managed to forget. Ida’s bunkmate at Camp Golden Hills when they were girls, Marissa was confident, sophisticated, and wealthy. Everything Ida wasn’t. Now the polished wife of a major conservative donor, Marissa’s announced a press conference. About Ida.

Belle Simon was just 12 years old when she was one of six girls plucked from obscurity to star in reality TV sensation The Real Deal. Under the wing of dazzling star Donna Mayfair, she and the other five girls were meant to become world-famous actresses, singers and dancers. But at 26, Belle is trying to live anonymously, away from being loved or loathed. The public eye has never fully shut, however, and when a producer offers Belle a big paycheck to join a reunion special for The Real Deal, she finds it hard to say no.

Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are eight years old when they meet late one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she's intrigued by the boy who shows up all alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy's taken back to the emergency room and Rachel's sent back to her bed, they think they'll never see each other again.

Lena Sharma is a successful San Francisco restaurateur. An immigrant, she’s cultivated an image of conservatism and tradition in her close-knit Indian community. But when Lena’s carefully constructed world begins to crumble, her ties to her daughter, Maya, and son, Sameer - both raised in thoroughly modern California - slip further away.