LIES WE TELL ABOUT THE STARS, by Susie Nadler, Dutton Books for Young Readers, March 3, 2026, Hardcover, $19.99 (young adult, ages 14 and up)
A girl sets out to find her best friend in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake in Lies We Tell About the Stars, by Susie Nadler.
Celeste Muldoon is alone when the Big One finally hits, because, for the first time ever, her best friend stood her up after school. Nicky and Celeste share a birthday, matching tattoos, an obsession with the upcoming Mars mission, and pretty much everything else. So why did he ghost her on the day she needed him most?
As the quake’s death toll rises and days pass, Nicky and Celeste’s parents fear the worst. But Celeste doesn’t buy it. He couldn’t be dead. Nicky’d spent their senior year selling essays to rich kids and was about to get caught. He’d told Celeste about his plan to vanish, to reinvent himself and escape the disaster he’d created. The quake would be perfect cover.
But she can’t convince anyone that he could still be alive. Only Meo, a mysterious stranger who was somehow mixed up with Nicky, seems to believe, but Celeste has every reason to distrust him—even if her heart races whenever Meo shows up.
When Celeste finds Nicky’s notebook, it sends her and Meo on a quest across the broken city, up the coast through towns sheltering quake refugees, and eventually all the way to Florida, where the mission to Mars is about to lift off. —Synopsis provided by Dutton Books for Young Readers
The plot of Lies We Tell About the Stars is promising. It’s a coming-of-age story set in the near future, just as the first human mission to Mars is about to launch. Celeste and Nicky have been joined at the hip and have great plans for the future. But Nicky has been pushing away, and then the quake happens, and he disappears.
And then, Celeste is alone.
The story follows Celeste’s search for Nicky. And the book starts out strong with the big quake and the immediate aftermath. But then, it just kind of stalls. There’s a good chunk of pages where nothing really happens. And that’s unfortunate, because author Susie Nadler is going to lose some of her audience on the way to what could be a satisfying book.
I suggest checking it out from the library prior to purchase to see if it’s a good fit.
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