56 pages • 1 hour read
Talia HibbertHighly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Celine Bangura
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. Though she now understands that her father’s bad choices are his own, her continued interest in conspiracies allows her to live out the relief that comes from this fantastical thinking.
Over the course of the novel, Celine learns to grow more in touch with her feelings, which she has long repressed. She also learns to understand that her experience does not necessarily reflect the experiences of others, and that others may experience insecurities that she does not.
Bradley “Brad” Graeme
Bradley “Brad” Graeme is one of the narrators and protagonists of Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute. Brad is known around his school as being a popular, affable football player. His long-term rivalry with Celine is also widely known, though few of Brad’s school friends know that he and Celine were once close. Brad also has not widely revealed his OCD, though his closer friends, such as Jordan, know about his diagnosis. Though he recognizes that he is more comfortable with OCD as a part of his life than he was when he was younger, Brad still carries some residual fear that others will reject him due to his neurodivergence, something that he comes to work through during the novel.
Brad is a high-achieving student, his scores outmatched only by those of Celine, though he does not aspire to a prestigious university. Rather, he prefers local universities. Despite this apparent modest aspiration, Brad feels an intense pressure to live up to the expectations he (wrongfully) assumes his parents hold for him. Part of this pressure originates in his sense that he needs to “make up” for the stress he caused his parents as a child struggling with as-yet undiagnosed OCD. As the novel progresses, Brad develops the confidence to tell his parents that he wishes not to study law like his father, but rather to pursue a course in English, pursuant to his goals of becoming an author.
Over the course of the novel, Brad learns to have confidence in himself, practices his OCD management techniques, and comes to understand that he doesn’t need to know everything about a topic in order to “deserve” to learn about that topic. He uses his skills of empathy and patience to help foster his reconciliation with Celine, skills he gradually learns to direct toward himself, as well.
Aurora
Aurora is Celine’s roommate on the first BEP expedition, which leads the two to become friends. They eventually form a small group within the BEP explorers, including Brad, Sophie, and Raj. At the beginning of the BEP, Aurora is intensely shy, so much so that she struggles to speak up even when she has ideas or knowledge that will help the group accomplish their tasks. As she grows more comfortable with her small group of friends and receives encouragement from Celine and Brad, she grows more comfortable expressing herself. By the second expedition, she feels comfortable enough to tease Celine about her clear affection for Brad.
Aurora has Celiac disease, a condition she credits with helping develop her ability to see who is truly worthy of friendship; before her diagnosis, her frequent illness led her to be bullied by her peers. Aurora’s self-confidence suffered from this bullying, something that shocks Celine, whose own confidence is unshakeable. The support of her BEP friends helps Aurora continue to build her confidence, though she remains reticent around strangers or authority figures.
Jordan Cooper
Jordan Cooper is Brad’s best friend and another member of the football team. Jordan is American, leading Brad to tease his friend about insistently calling football “soccer.” He is easygoing and loyal; when Donno reacts to Brad standing up to him by preventing both Brad and Jordan from playing in school football games, Jordan is quick to dismiss Brad’s apology for this as unnecessary, citing that Donno’s decisions belong to Donno alone and that Jordan’s true interest in joining the football team was making friends after emigrating, which he has done.
Jordan frequently supports Brad in the novel, calling him on the phone to discuss Brad’s relationship woes with Celine or his struggles with planning his future. Jordan knows about Brad’s OCD and uses this knowledge to remind Brad of the therapeutic strategies that will help him differentiate between rational fears and intrusive thoughts. Jordan is invested in social justice, as his initial interest in Minnie (this transforms into friendship when he learns that Minnie is a lesbian) arises when she protests lack of intellectual diversity in the school’s literature selections.
