Ava Whitmore, a wealthy girl from Los Angeles, was portrayed by her stepmother as an \"uncontrollable troublemaker.\" After a scandal at a party, she was forced to return home only to find that a stranger named Lailie Quinn had moved into her pool house. Lailie came from a poor town and was a talented student who received scholarships funded by the Whitmore Women’s Education Foundation. She was calm, excellent, and self-controlled, appearing to be the \"perfect replacement\" that stepmother Celeste had created for Ava. Ava believed that Lailie was there to take away her family, her father, and her life, so she tried to undermine her at every turn. But Ava didn’t realize that Lailie wasn’t there to replace her.
