This story is about three girls starting secondary school in the year after the Covid pandemic. Bella and Connie are best friends, and they live in the same suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne. Then Connie’s older cousin Mish moves into the area, and she starts to disrupt things, with dramatic results… The story is about friendship, trust, and growing up in a post-pandemic world.

The book centres around surveillance and growing up in a world where everyone is constantly being tracked. Talking with the young people I know (and their parents!), I’ve been surprised and alarmed by the level of tracking that seems ‘normal’. Young people are often frustrated or angry that their parents keep tabs on them, and the kids feel they have a right to some privacy. Their parents say that it’s for their own good that their kids are tracked with apps on phones or other devices. I think it’s an interesting dilemma for kids today, and I found myself asking whether we have a right to know everything about the people we love. I suppose it comes down to the notion of trust – how do we trust, and what happens when trust is violated?

The book also deals with what it was like for people re-entering the world after lockdowns. I live in Melbourne and we were one of the most lock-down populations in the world! I think everyone, children and adults, has been affected by the lockdowns. Kids missed out on many rites of passage – school graduations, camps, sporting competitions, parties and festivals, holidays, and even just being able to see their friends and family. Or go to the park! Home-schooling worked for some but not for others. I think many kids and young people have poorer social skills as a result of the pandemic and lockdowns. Maybe it has made us all a little less trusting of what the world might throw at us.

Hopefully readers will identify with the characters and the dilemmas they find themselves in. If someone is struggling with their parents tracking or monitoring them, the story may help them think about this in different ways and from different points of view. Friendship is so important in those early teen years, and it’s often fraught as well! All three main characters in the book encounter difficulties in their friendships, but they do work through them (some characters more than others) so hopefully young readers might see that they too can work through friendship challenges.

I hope readers enjoy the story and find it dramatic and exciting! (It does build to a dramatic climax!) I also hope it encourages the reader to think about where they stand on some big ideas, like trust, responsibility, a right to privacy and a right to freedom.

Jane