Starr Carter is a 16-year-old American American girl living in a fictional neighborhood populated by mostly colorful people called Garden Heights. She goes to a private school where there are white students called Williamson Prep. After a weapon launches at a party where Starr is together with Kenya, her brother’s sister, Starr is taken home by her best friend her childhood, Khalil.
As they go home, they are stopped by a white police officer. He tells Khalil, black, to leave the car; after he gets out of the car, Khalil stretches through the driver’s window to see what Starr does and take a brush. The cop, however, sees that Khalil has a suspicious object in his hand and thinks it is dangerous, so he pulls off the gun and shoots it three times, killing him.
Starr is rushing to see what happened to her boyfriend, and the cop asks him to keep the distance, and then he notices the mistake he made. Khalil’s death immediately becomes a national news, and a great storm springs around him. Scarr’s identity as a witness is initially kept secret by everyone except his family – none of her friends or school colleagues have the slightest idea of ​​Starr’s involvement in the situation. Things change when trying to hush the case, and Starr needs to find a voice and firmly face the truth.