Lies We Tell About the Stars
Susie Nadler
Dutton Books for Young Readers
Published March 3, 2026

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About Lies We Tell About the Stars

A gorgeous debut about friendship, grief, and new beginnings set in near-future San Francisco in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake and on the cusp of the first human mission to Mars.

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.

My Review

Celeste has Type I Diabetes, which isn’t something I’ve seen in young adult fiction all too often. She has a service dog that’s trained to warn her if her blood sugar level goes too high or low. I liked the way these things were incorporated into the story, yet not the focus of the story. Celeste is a lot more than her diabetes diagnosis.

I will confess that I had to skip to the end of the book to find out whether Nicky was still alive. It isn’t clear early in the story whether he is missing or has died, and I didn’t think I could handle waiting to discover what his status was, since it was clear Celeste was so invested in finding him alive.

I have mixed feelings about the ending, though I appreciate the route the story takes. I like that ultimately, Celeste had to learn to make choices for herself and to decide what she wanted apart from her identity as Nicky’s “twin.”

The story begins with a disastrous earthquake, also not something that’s included very often in realistic young adult fiction, so I thought that was a cool premise as well. I liked the content about the space program and Celeste’s interest in it, too. It’s always interesting to read books set in Florida or that have scenes set in places I’ve been to, so that was especially cool, too.

Readers looking for an intense contemporary story about changing relationships that include a near-future space program will want to check this one out.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used pretty frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing. Brief descriptions of sexual contact.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Celeste survives a disastrous earthquake and navigates the aftermath. References to deaths during the earthquake and to some memorial scenes. Celeste makes some reckless choices about her health. Someone kidnaps a dog.

Drug Content
References to teens smoking pot and drinking alcohol.

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