[2383] WHEN STARS FALL YA Literary
I would appreciate feedback on the first 3 chapters of my young adult literary novel. It’s about a teenage girl who begins to suspect her parents aren’t telling her everything about her past after she finds a heart shaped locket holding a photograph of a girl she doesn’t recognize in her baby keepsake box. Instead of turning to those she loves, she talks to an AI application called Atlas.
I would appreciate any feedback. This is my first book and I’m really just wondering whether it resonates with readers and feels like a genuine novel. Thank you in advance for reading.
Chapter 1
She was bareback on a white horse, its coat shining like moonlight, silver mane rippling as it ran through a wide meadow between snow-tipped mountains. The wind whistled past her ears. Her legs dangled on either side, bare feet brushing against the horse’s flank. One hand gripped the mane tightly. The other hovered outward, feeling the wind rise and fall with each stride.
Suddenly, the horse stopped. Beneath them, smooth river rocks replaced the meadow. The ground trembled. Water surged beneath her, covering the horse’s hooves, reflecting the glittering sky above.
Then, the night sky cracked. The stars fractured all at once—splitting, breaking, falling. Burning through the dark as they tore toward the earth—
Toward her.
She jolted awake.
Eleanora Bennett lay very still, her hands clenched tight—like she was still holding on.
No one called her Eleanora.
She had been Lennie for as long as she could remember.
She had left the window cracked open, as she did every night, even in winter. The night wind slipped in softly, chilling her cheeks and the tip of her nose. Lennie liked to sleep with her bedroom cold under heavy blankets.
The dream came back in pieces.
Lennie exhaled slowly and reached for her phone on the edge of the nightstand.
The screen lit her face as it recognized her.
She tapped Atlas — the deep navy circle with a centered silver-white A, seven faint stars scattered around it.
I dreamed I was riding a horse bareback through mountains, and then a river started flowing beneath me over rocks. Stars started falling from the sky. I woke up right before they hit me.
Text appeared.
Riding a horse bareback often reflects trust in something powerful—or the belief that you don’t need protection.
Water rising beneath it suggests that what once felt steady may no longer be.
Falling stars are rarely about destruction. They usually signal change—the end of one way of seeing the world.
You may be sensing change before it becomes visible.
She read it twice. Slower the second time.
Lennie had always feared the end of things—tornado sirens, desert wastelands, rising seas like in the movie she and her dad watched.
“That would be the worst,” she had told him, curled into his side as the mariner spoke about a world with no land.
“I can think of worse things,” her dad had said.
Lennie had turned back to the screen then, sensing a part of her dad she didn’t know. A pit in her stomach had settled in that moment, growing with each passing day like roots from a seed.
So the stars falling doesn’t mean the world will end in my lifetime but apparently things are going to change. That was fine with her.
She sank deeper beneath her soft yellow gingham duvet, tossing her phone to the other side of the mattress.
She closed her eyes, trying to drift back to sleep as the first light of morning slipped through her east-facing windows.
For a second, she thought she saw it again—
a flicker.
Falling light behind her eyelids.
Then, her mom’s voice cut through the quiet. Too loud for this early. Even muffled by distance, Lennie could hear the edge in it—the quicker pace, the sharper tone.
With a sigh, she threw back the covers and walked to the bathroom, stepping through the dust drifting in the beams of morning light.
Chapter 2
Lennie splashed cold water on her face before looking at her reflection in the gold-rimmed circular mirror above the sink.
She looked the same.
She twisted the right side of her wavy hair, then the left, bringing them together and securing them with an ivory claw clip. A few loose pieces slipped free around her face. She left them.
Then she slipped her phone into her backpack—hesitating for a second before letting it go, like she might need it again sooner than she expected.
Warm air enveloped her as she left her bedroom, making an immediate right for the curved stairway that led to the kitchen. Taking the steps two at a time, she tilted her head up instinctively when her orange tabby, Winnie, leapt across the upstairs hallway above the foyer.
“Good morning to you too, Winnie,” Lennie said, padding the rest of the way down the stairs and turning left into the kitchen.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” her mom said, looking up from her phone and raising her coffee cup to her lips.
“Morning,” Lennie said, grabbing a blueberry muffin from a scalloped platter.
“Ahh!” she yelped as her dad’s calloused fingers squeezed her biceps. “Da-ad, stop,” she said, laughing as he squeezed once or twice more.
“Okay, okay,” he said with a chuckle. He reached past her for a muffin, then crossed to the coffee maker to top off his mug.
Lennie noticed he was using the one she’d made for him at the pottery store in town when she was probably nine. It was shaped like a wide, squat fish, the rim its open mouth, the handle a crooked little hook.
Not my best work, she thought. But he used it anyway. Every morning.
“How’d you sleep, Len?”
“Good. Had a crazy dream again,” Lennie said, sitting at the table across from her mom.
“What about?” he asked, taking his seat and looking straight at her.
“I was riding a horse by mountains and a river, and then the stars fell to earth. It was actually pretty scary.”
She glanced toward her backpack without meaning to, like the answer might already be waiting for her there.
She looked up at her mom, but her eyes were fixed on her phone, her thumb scrolling absently.
“That does sound scary, but cool too. Sounds like an adventure to me,” her dad said.
“Oh my gosh, look, Lennie, what Grandma posted,” her mom said, holding up her phone. “You were so little!” she squealed.
Lennie leaned forward slightly, more out of instinct than curiosity.
She stared at the photo. Twelve-year-old her smiled brightly at the camera, holding a painting of a mountain range at sunset, proud and lit from within.
Her eyes lifted to read the caption.
I heard it’s Granddaughter’s Day! Happy Granddaughter’s Day to my perfect ocean-eyed angel.
An angel emoji. Two pink hearts.
“Oh jeez,” her dad said, a clear note of annoyance in his voice.
“What? It’s such an adorable picture. And your painting, Len, you’ve always had talent.”
“Of course she does. She’s my baby,” her dad said with a laugh. “But that’s not the problem. I’ve told your mom to stop posting Lennie all over the internet.”
“It’s Granddaughter’s Day, Peter. Lighten up.”
Holding down the like button, her mom chose the heart icon and released it, the familiar pop sounding into the air. Then she set her phone down—face up.
“I miss your paintings,” she said.
Something in Lennie sank.
“I’ll paint something later, promise. Maybe after school,” she said, peeling the wrapper off her muffin. “Or maybe during class.”
Her mom smiled faintly—but her hand had already drifted back to her phone.
Lennie looked from her mom’s green-blue eyes, one eyebrow slightly raised, to her dad. He smiled softly before looking down at the wide-open fish mouth in his hand.
For a moment, Lennie felt like she was being remembered instead of seen.
Like the version of her they loved most was the one that already existed.
Chapter 3
Lennie finished her muffin as the low rumble of her dad’s diesel truck vibrated through the kitchen floorboards. She looked up, past the white oak cabinets he’d built years ago, and out the sink window. Cream linen roman shades framed the driveway as the truck backed out, a plume of white exhaust blooming in the cold air before thinning into nothing.
He used to build kitchens in this neighborhood.
Now they lived in one of them.
Four years ago they’d left the west side of town — their narrow beach bungalow with the wraparound porch and single bathroom.
“Oh my God, Mom, we’re going to have a pool? I get my own bathroom?” she had shrieked.
Laughing, her mom said, “I know, I know.”
“And the little metal door with the tunnel to the laundry room? That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh agreed. That chute is going to be fun.”
Back then, everything about this house felt like an upgrade. These days, she wasn’t so sure.
Sometimes it felt like something had been traded for it. She just couldn’t name what.
Heels clicked across the pantry tile.
“Let’s go, Lennie,” her mom said softly.
In the white Tesla, the screen flickered to life. A thin silver line arced across a dark field, then resolved into the navigation map. Lennie rested her backpack between her feet while her mom tapped School on the glowing interface. The map flashed briefly before recalculating.
“Route updated,” the car chimed softly.
Her mom didn’t glance at the screen. The garage door lifted. The car eased backward without a sound. Neither of them spoke.
Lennie looked out the window as the car rolled down their street, the neighborhood still quiet, lawns draped with dew.
Then the car slowed and turned toward a street they didn’t usually take. She sat a little straighter. The road narrowed, the houses spaced farther apart.
And then the bridge.
A narrow stretch of road lined with an old rock fence, uneven and worn, like it had been there long before anything else. Water threaded between the stones below, a dark seam against the pale mortar.
The Tesla rolled forward. The tires hummed differently now—lower, rougher—as they passed over the cobblestones.
The stream below was perfectly still — like a lake at night. For a second the surface caught the morning light and rippled, like something beneath it had swam away. By the time she craned her neck to keep looking, the water had gone still again.
Then she glanced at the screen. The blue line curved confidently ahead of them.
Why is the car going this way?
They had never taken this route before. She almost said something. But didn’t.
It must know something we don’t, she thought, settling back into her seat.
But the thought didn’t fully settle. It lingered—quiet, just beneath everything else.
The stone steps to school were cool beneath her sneakers. She walked quickly, disappearing into the tide of students—most with their eyes angled downward, glowing screens reflected faintly across their faces even as the steps climbed upward.
She reached art class a few minutes later, taking her seat and scanning the room for June, noticing Delilah posing for a selfie, her pretty face directly facing the morning light.
“Good morning, class,” Ms. Hart said calmly as she got up from her weathered leather office chair and stood beside the screen displaying today’s agenda. She wore a canvas apron splotched with paint of every color and an olive green button down, sleeves rolled up; violet daisies hung from her ears.
“The assignment is to paint—using what we’ve learned about color and texture—a representation of your future.”
The classroom door opened, the latch loud in the quiet room.
“Sorry, Ms. Hart—bus was late again,” June said, easing the door closed more gently this time.
“Take your seat, Ms. Dawson. You have until Thanksgiving break to complete your painting, so take your time. Any questions?”
A manicured hand shot up.
“Delilah?”
“How far in the future are we talking about?”
“Any amount of time. It could be what you think life will hold for you when you are twenty, thirty, even eighty. Paint what feels right to you. This is as much about the skills we’ve learned as it is about creating something meaningful.”
Ms. Hart paused, waiting for another question.
“Alright—go ahead and get started. I’ll be walking around.”
Lennie’s eyes drifted, just for a second—to the memory of the bridge.
Then back to her blank canvas.
“Morning, Lennie,” June said, turning toward her, her well-loved Vans squeaking softly on the tile.
“Morning. What are you going to paint?”
“I don’t know. Glad we have a while,” she said, then lowered her voice. “I’ve got to tell you what I dreamed about. It was horrible. Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“I was walking at school past those mirrored windows and I kept feeling like someone was following me—when I looked over I saw my reflection.” June’s voice dropped further. “It wasn’t me—in the mirror I mean.”
“What was it?”
“It was almost like a dragon but shaped like me, like I was covered in green and pink scales with a dragon face.”
Lennie burst out laughing.
June smacked her arm.
“Okay, that is horrifying.”
“I know.”
“Were you scared of it?”
“Yes! It was like I couldn’t figure out if it was actually me or a monster trying to get me.”
“Well how did it end?”
“I basically stood right up to the mirror and looked at its creepy eyes wondering if that is actually what I look like, then I woke up.”
“Sometimes, your face does kind of remind me of dragon-like creatures,” Lennie laughed.
June just rolled her eyes—but she didn’t laugh.
They both stared at the blank canvas Ms. Hart had set at each station.
Lennie’s dream came back to her then—the white horse, the mountains, the water, the sky cracking open, the stars. Where most dreams faded, this one expanded. Its edges sharpened, its details returned instead of disappearing.
After gathering her paints, brushes, water cup, and apron, Lennie stood at her station.
She dipped her brush into deep blue, then darkened it with black until it felt like space—far from any star.
She dragged it across the canvas in long, steady strokes.
“Did you look up what it means… on Atlas?” Lennie asked.
“Yeah,” June said. “Something about hiding parts of yourself. Or not wanting people to see who you really are.”
“Hmm,” Lennie said. “That kind of makes sense.”
Lennie rinsed her brush and reached for white.
“Probably how awful my artistic skills are,” June laughed.
“You aren’t bad, Junie.”
Lennie paused, her brush hovering.
She lifted the brush and began painting thin streaks of white into the dark sky.
But the stars didn’t look distant.
They didn’t look still.
They looked like they were falling.
Toward her.
My Critique:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/C94p2VLadm