All the Lovely Bad Ones begins with the novel’s main protagonist, Travis, a 13-year-old boy arriving with his 12-year-old sister, Corey, at the Burlington airport in Vermont. Their grandmother meets them at the airport in a red pick-up truck, and she drives them out into the countryside. Though she is surprised that Travis and Corey chose to visit her for the summer instead of attending camp like usual, she is excited to have them. Travis and Corey do not tell their grandmother that they were forbidden from returning to Camp Willow Tree because of the mischief, pranks, and chaos that they perpetuated there in the previous years. Their parents threatened them with an entire summer of pre-algebra classes should they misbehave while with their grandmother.

Grandmother owns an inn in rural Vermont called the Inn at Fox Hill. The inn sits at the end of a long driveway, a “three-story pink brick building” with a large “lawn, flower beds, and wooden rocking chairs on the front porch” (8). The inn currently only has two young men staying there, despite having six rooms. Grandmother is disappointed by the number of guests but chalks it up to how remote the inn is.