Two months before his 30th birthday, Adam's dreams of success are shattered when his first novel is rejected by his boss Cassandra, the sexy and savvy editor at Larabee Publishing. Plunging headfirst into depression, Adam becomes obsessed with the failures that have defined his life, listing them all in rich detail in his notebook. When his best friend Jane smuggles the notebook out of his house and into the hands of a publisher, Adam suddenly finds himself the object of a bidding war between publishers who herald him as the voice of his generation.