High-achieving high-school senior Dani Barnes dreams of getting into UC Davis, the world's top veterinary school. Then a glamorous new friend draws her into a Southern California scene that threatens everything she's worked for.

A quarter-life crisis causes a young Chinese-American woman, Nicky Shen, to drop out of college and go on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. But when she returns to find her hometown overrun with crime and ...