Sydney Whitmore, a forensic psychologist living in San Francisco, moves home to Shipwreck Island, and the resort owned and operated by her family, after tragedy strikes leaving her struggling for a way to make sense of things. After finding out about the assault of an old friend, which has left him comatose, she renews her relationship with Ezra Reinhold, a reclusive billionaire who enjoys poking around in cold cases and has the means to hire the best people to find the answers no one else has been able to.

Bexley Cosgrove has a soft spot for abandoned animals after being abandoned herself as a young child. She knows she owes her life to the dog who found and rescued her, so as an adult, Bexley has committed her life to rescuing as many dogs and cats as possible. In book 1 of a new spinoff series set in picturesque Gooseberry Bay, Bexley finds a dog hiding on the car deck of the ferry that runs between Seattle Washington and the peninsula where the small town of Gooseberry Bay is tucked onto the shoreline of a beautiful deepwater inlet.

After suffering a personal tragedy Abby Sullivan buys a huge old seaside mansion she has never even seen, packs up her life in San Francisco, and moves to Holiday Bay Maine, where she is adopted, quite against her will, by a huge Maine Coon Cat named Rufus, a drifter with her own tragic past named Georgia, and a giant dog with an inferiority complex named Ramos. What Abby thought she needed was alone time to heal. What she ended up with was, an inn she never knew she wanted, a cat she couldn't seem to convince to leave, and a new family she'd never be able to live without.

Shelby Morris came to Holiday Bay after receiving a huge inheritance from a woman she'd never met which she'd been destined to share with two half-sisters she'd never knew existed. It took some time for the three very different siblings to settle the estate in a manner that was agreeable to all of them, but in the end, it was decided that Shelby would stay and take care of things.

Alyson Prescott moves to Cutter's Cove, Oregon, after being placed, along with her mother, in the witness protection program. She is forced to leave her old life behind and become a middle-class girl, living in a middle-class town. Alyson struggles with the duplicity in her life as she strives to reconcile her new life with the old.