Agnes "Ness" Larkin has been out of the spotlight for twenty years since her quick departure from a starring role in a hit teen TV drama. When the show is tapped for a reboot, no one is more surprised than Ness that she signs on to rejoin the cast, leaving behind a normal--if not exactly thrilling--life in Toronto. Also back for round two are Libby, Ness's former best friend and soon to be makeup empire magnate, and Hayes, Ness's one-that-got-away who has risen to A-list fame (and somehow gotten even better looking) in the years she's been gone. When they set off for filming near the Bahamas, a storm leaves the seven actors and one production assistant stranded on a small island with only an abandoned, derelict mansion to wait out the storm. But when the weather clears and a new day rises--their boat is gone too. Stuck in a bizarre, crumbling house on an uninhabited island with possibly the most useless survival group in history, Ness and her co-stars are forced to revisit a minefield of past transgressions and come to terms with the adults they've become as they work together to ride out the storm. Or at least pretend to--they are actors, after all. Interspersed with weather reports, fictional memoir excerpts, a dating profile and Perez-Hilton-esque blog posts, Not How I Pictured It is a rollicking novel of delightful absurdity, pithy dialogue, and no shortage of heart.