Breen Kelly is the protagonist. The novel mainly sees things through her point-of-view using third-person narration. In other words, the narrative refers to her with third person pronouns, “she” and “her.” She doesn’t tell the story directly in the first-person, using “I.”

Breen is a 26-year-old woman who lives in Philadelphia. When the novel begins, Breen teaches middle school, a job she doesn’t enjoy but took up because her mother Jennifer Wilcox thought she should. Her mother is a successful advertising executive and her father, Eian Kelly has been absent from her life since Breen was 10. Breen feels distant and disconnected from her mother, but remembers her father used to tell her fantastic stories of magical places. Breen has been dyeing her naturally red hair brown and wearing drab clothes so she doesn’t stand out. When she discovers her inheritance and decides to travel to Ireland to look for her father, she returns to her natural hair color and updates her wardrobe; this signifies the first step of her transformation.

Breen’s chosen family is her main source of emotional support. She loves her closest friend Marco like a brother, and finds a surrogate parent in Sally.