Xenia has her life completely under control. She leads a happy private life with her husband Sergej and her adolescent daughter Anja. Having just arrived back from a congress in Weimar, she starts organising a New Year's Eve party with her chaotic friend Vera, who is constantly falling in love, Marina, an out-of-work translator, and a few other good friends. Xenia's practice as a psychoanalyst is booming, and she has as many patients as she can possibly cope with. Then a colleague asks her to take over a case that she is having difficulty in handling. Unwillingly, and only because she owes her colleague a favour, Xenia agrees to meet the patient for a preliminary consultation. But the patient soon begins to interest her; in fact, he casts a spell over her with his intelligence and his charm. Xenia is so fascinated by the case that it is a long time before she notices that she is gradually getting out of her depth. This psycho-thriller, which is part of a cycle of three in each of which another of the three women friends is the main character, is Anna Dankowtsewa's debut – and a highly successful one at that.

An old, seaside villa with a large, white terrace – this is how the translator Marina imagines the property she has inherited in Bulgaria. Of course, her friends – the realistic psychotherapist Xenia and the cheeky tradeswoman Vera – soon have Marina's feet back on the ground. An inheritance in Bulgaria does not necessarily mean sun, sea, the beach and white terraces – more likely a bureaucratic nightmare and endless nerve-racking repairs. But the two women are not completely immune to Marina's daydreams. When Marina decides to drive to Bulgaria with her two children in order to inspect the property, Xenia and Vera suddenly join the bandwagon. At least one might be able to spend a pleasant summer at the seaside… An eventful time is in store for the three women in which not only the Bulgarian bureaucracy, but also a passionate archaeologist and his team, try to make their life difficult.