Rosie Mauer is the high school librarian, lunchroom attendant, and after-school detention monitor at Laurel Grove High School. Her best friend is a cat, and she has a secret crush on her sister’s boyfriend, a local fireman. Rosie sings in the church choir and knows that, despite her exceptionally high IQ, she blends into the world with as much flair as the wilting honeysuckle growing along the wall in her mother’s garden.
She believes her life will always be bland—until she is hired incognito to be the nanny for a rich man’s son, who is a suspect in the murder of two girls. Their disappearances and deaths may also echo the story of her aunt, who vanished forty years earlier. As Rosie Mauer, she feels like an awkward young woman who can’t seem to fit in. However, as her alter ego— the beautiful and outgoing Violet Popovich—she finds herself showered with gifts from admirers while digging deeper into a crime that surpasses the imaginings of those around her, putting her on the trail of a serial killer.
As the bodies begin to pile up, Rosie is running out of time to balance her two worlds, making it increasingly difficult to conceal her secret life.