Emma is still reeling from the events of her junior year at Darkwood Academy. Not only is her best friend, Oliver, shockingly alive, but the boy she loves, his genetic copy, Levi, is still on the island where he grew up, stranded with his deranged guardian. More importantly, she is grappling with who she really is. Emma can't accept the hard truths she learned last year and refuses to share her secrets with anyone, isolating herself from the Similars...

When Stevie Bell is finally able to return to Ellingham Academy after identifying the culprit in the murder of a classmate, she begins to wonder if the case was really resolved and attempts to uncover the truth about the school's founder. Stevie Bell seemed to be on the cusp of the decades-old kidnapping and murder of Albert Ellingham's family. But a classmate's murder-- which Stevie solved-- convinced her parents to pull her out of Ellingham Academy....