&I write this sitting in the kitchen sink& is the first line of this timeless witty & enchanting novel about growing up Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian & impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere Her journal records her life with her beautiful bored sister Rose her fadingly glamorous stepmother Topaz her little brother Thomas & her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer&s block However all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive & Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time