Content Warning: This guide references parental abandonment and details mental health conditions, specifically obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Celine Bangura

Celine Bangura is one of the protagonists and narrators of Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute. Celine is a high-achieving, academically minded student whose focus has long been on getting acceptance to Cambridge so she can enter a high-powered career as a corporate lawyer. Over the course of the novel, she increasingly comes to understand this plan is designed to prove her absentee father wrong, a project she will realize is both unlikely to be ineffective and is a misuse of her own passion and intelligence.

Celine is highly confident and stubborn. She holds onto her grudge toward Brad for years, unwilling to forgive the argument that damaged their friendship. Celine leverages this confidence toward her robust social media presence, which is focused on a TikTok channel about conspiracy theories. This interest in conspiracies shows Celine’s capacity for whimsy despite her single-minded focus on her academic future, while also allowing her an outlet to explore unlikely explanations for hard topics. Her interest stems from her childlike assumption that her father’s abandonment was not because of his poor decision-making, but because aliens abducted him.