Lies We Tell About the Stars

A gorgeous debut YA 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 San Francisco, because, for the first time ever, her best friend, Nicky, stood her up after school. The two of them share a birthday, matching tattoos, an obsession with the upcoming Mars mission, dreams of MIT, and pretty much everything else. So why didn’t he meet her the way they’d planned? 

The earthquake has a huge death toll, and Nicky and Celeste's parents fear the worst—but Celeste doesn’t buy it. Nicky spent their senior year selling essays to rich kids and was about to be exposed. Nicky had told Celeste about his plan to vanish, to reinvent himself and escape the disaster he’d created.

But Celeste can’t convince anyone that he could still be alive. Only Meo, a mysterious stranger who Nicky was somehow mixed up with seems to believe, but she has every reason to distrust him—even if her heart races every time he shows up.

When Celeste finds Nicky’s notebook, it sends her and Meo on a quest across her 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.