The predominantly female readership loves the romantic love novels that the Berlin author Max Mangold writes under the female pseudonym Jana van Hausten. For the anniversary edition of "Stürmische Zeiten" he gets into a real creative, life and marriage crisis despite the best sales figures. His publisher is pushing for the next bestseller to be completed and his wife Susanne, a respected law professor, decides to accept a call from Rostock University for a year. Alone because her marriage needs a break, explains Susanne. Max suspects that she is alone because her old childhood sweetheart, the fisherman Jörn, lives in Rostock. For the time being, Susanne is staying at her mother Greta's rural inn, who thinks as much of her son-in-law as he thinks of her: very little. But that doesn't stop Max from following his wife and camping in front of the inn because Greta refuses to give him a room. Max persistently courts Susanne and initially only impresses his mother-in-law, who turns out to be an ally. While torpedoing Jörn's advances to Susanne and at the same time struggling with his next novel, Max meets the attractive hairdresser Nancy. She has read all 25 of Jana van Hausten's novels and is using unusual means to help him overcome his writer's block.