Lou is reeling from a triple whammy of shocks that have left her loveless, jobless and almost homeless. Staying for a night with an old friend in the Cotswold village of Foxwell, she lends a helping hand to a spectacularly ungrateful older man with a reputation in the village for being a 'character'. When Edgar makes a suggestion that would solve two out of three of Lou's problems in one fell swoop, it's hard to resist. Especially as the return to the village of the very attractive Remy—not that he's even noticed Lou!—makes it an unusually appealing place to live.

It's set to be the perfect wedding - till the chauffeur is asked to keep driving the bride round the church. This wedding is not going as planned. Lottie is a guest at the wedding when she sees Max for the first time in fifteen years. No kiss since has matched their last kiss together. They were on the brink of a beautiful love story. Then something shocking happened that tore them apart. Now here he is, handsome as ever, teasing Lottie in the old way - and that tingling electric attraction is back. But Max is out of bounds.

When Jessie left home at eighteen, she swore she’d never go back. But when life takes a turn for the complicated, she’s forced to move in with her twin, Isaac, and his two best friends. To her dismay, one of these is Elliot, the boy Jessie once loved, until his life was changed forever by a terrible accident that Jessie still blames herself for.

Tress Walker waved her perfect husband Max off to work, with no idea that she was about to go into labour with their first child. And completely unaware that when she tried to track Max down, he wouldn’t be where he was supposed to be. At the same time, Max’s best friend Noah Clark said goodbye to his wife, Anya, blissfully oblivious that he would soon discover the woman he adored had been lying to him for years. And living alongside the two couples, their recently widowed friend, Nancy Jenkins, is getting ready to meet Eddie, her first true love at a school reunion.

After the end of a long-term relationship, local weather girl Bea Armstrong has been avoiding her family, and their inevitable 'I-told-you-sos'. But with Christmas fast approaching, she is finally on her way home to Charis House, the school in Sherwood Forest that her mum and dad run in their old family home. And to top it all off, the insufferable Henry Fairfax—who her parents have always wanted her to marry—has also been invited.

May O'Callaghan has decided that life's too short and she's decided to throw in the towel in her predictable nine-to-five job. Now what? As May fits into her new life we meet her friend Pam and her husband Jack - but why is Pam terrified to tell Jack that she's pregnant? And then there's Denis and Bernard, May's next-door neighbours, going about their business oblivious to the deadly threat that lurks close by. There's Paddy, who lives on his own yet never seems to be at home.

Thirty-three-year-old Ruth Henderson and her daughter Maggie have some hard choices to make. Following the tragic death of Maggie’s father, they are left with a mountain of debt and broken hearts. So, despite her vow never to return home after the fall-out from her teenage pregnancy, Ruth can’t see any option other than for the two of them to move back in with her parents.

Katie Collins has barely ever left her tiny Irish village of Ennisbawn. Why would she? With its tightknit community, friendly local pub, surrounded by glistening lakes and perfectly mysterious forests, it’s a place of peaceful beauty. Or it was peaceful. Until Callum Dempsey turned up. Part of a hotshot (and, Katie has to admit, hot is annoyingly apt for him...) development team with zero eye for beauty or charm, he’s not only building a hideous hotel just outside the village, he’s also just announced a plan to knock down Ennisbawn’s only remaining pub. 

When Olivia Tennyson - or Ollie to her friends - was 16, she wrote a Dream List of all the things she wanted for her life, including a happy marriage and a family. But at 29, Ollie is single, living at home with her over-protective and manipulative mother and is feeling like her dreams are getting further out of reach. It’s time for a change. It’s time to take matters into her own hands.

Ven, Roz, Olive and Frankie have been friends since school. They day-dreamed of glorious futures, full of riches, romance and fabulous jobs. The world would be their oyster. Twenty-five years later, Olive cleans other people's houses to support her lazy, out-of-work husband and his ailing mother. Roz cannot show her kind, caring husband, Manus, any love because her philandering ex has left her trust in shreds. And she and Frankie have fallen out big time.