It starts off with a girl who is sent to her grandparents (It has been a year since I last read it, so some of this might be confusing or not accurate). Her aunts and cousins are there as well (I believe from the mother's side). She is told to not go in the forest or talk to the neighboring boys. She writes in her journal as often as she can, and it is a story. She manages to convince her cousins to play story and to go into the forest. Sometime after, they meet some boys. The girl's cousin warns her about how this isn't a good idea, because they weren't allowed to talk to them. Now we skip to a later part of the book, and they found out the real reason why they can't talk to the neighboring boys. It was because her aunts and grandma started the fire that burned down the boys' house. But the town didn't know that, they only knew her family as the heroes who tried to save the boys' household.