Who is the most influential girl in school's best friend?
Gemma Doyle, the series' protagonist, is forced to leave India after the death of her mother to attend a private boarding school in London.
On her sixteenth birthday, Gemma and her mother stroll through the Bombay market when they encounter a man and his younger brother. The man relays an unknown message to Gemma's mother about a woman named Circe, and Gemma's mother panics and demands that Gemma return home. Angry at her mother's secrecy, Gemma runs away, and has a vision of her mother committing suicide while searching for her, which she later learns is true. Gemma becomes haunted with the images of her mother's death.
With her mother dead and her father's addiction to laudanum growing stronger, Gemma's family ships her off to a finishing school in London: Spence Academy for Young Ladies. At first, Gemma is an outcast at the school; however, she soon finds the most popular and influential girl in school, Felicity, in a compromising situation that would ruin Felicity's life. Gemma agrees not to tell Felicity's secret and the girls soon form a strong friendship, along with Gemma's roommate Ann, and Felicity's best friend, Pippa. But Gemma is still tormented with her visions and is warned by the young man she had met in the market, Kartik, a member of an ancient group of men known as the Rakshana, dating all the way back to Charlemagne, that she must close her mind to these visions or something horrible will happen.
Pippa