Esther Hanada, 13, never knew she had the power to jump into her own drawings until she loses a manga competition to her arch-nemesis, goth queen Cora Sanchez, and accidentally transports into the pages of her graphic novel. Once there, Esther finds strange new characters wreaking havoc in her story. But these aren’t her creations—they’re Cora’s.Even worse, some of Esther's characters have somehow been switched into Cora's story and neither girl can undo the damage. They have only five days to return each other’s characters before the portfolio submission deadline of their coveted art high school. Esther and Cora must call a truce and work together to set things straight—in two worlds.
Soon Esther's living a double life—chores and homework by day, manga heroine by night. She travels between fantasy and reality trying to save her story from Cora's punk rock villain as he attempts to conquer her world with his mesmerizing music. Meanwhile, Esther's also caught between her polar opposite parents. Her CFO Japanese mom expects her to study STEM. Her Jewish dad’s super-embarrassing YouTube performance antics make her never want to pick up a Prismacolor pencil again. Plus, she needs to dig deep and kick butt on an art project exploring her mixed cultural identity if she hopes to obtain her teacher’s vital recommendation for art school.
Although Esther tries to fix her manga’s problems with new drawings, they grow worse—hurting her gentlest character and endangering her protagonist: a hot, shy librarian. As the hours to the scholarship’s deadline tick down, Esther must work with Cora to defeat armed guards, scent-hunting ‘bots, and hypnotizing music in order to finish her story #IRL—before it finishes her.
