Amy Anderson (Emma Roberts) is a naive, awkward university graduate desperate to get her poetry career off the ground. Saddled with debt and unemployed, she moves back in with her parents in her seemingly bland upstate New York hometown. When her car is stolen and her parents cut her off financially, she begrudgingly accepts the only job she can find; working the cash register at Adult World - the local sex shop owned by a frisky elderly couple and staffed by diva transvestite Rubio and sweet local boy Alex. But Amy's true passion is poetry, and she is determined to become the protege of reclusive writer Rat Billings (a hilarious John Cusack). Headstrong and defiant, Amy stumbles through her new life, finding out that inspiration can be found in the most improbable places.