Look Me in the Eye by Jane Godwin

Title: Look Me in the Eye

Author: Jane Godwin

Genre: Young Adult

Publisher: Lothian/Hachette

Published: 28^th February 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 245

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: Once trust is gone, what is there to hold onto? From award-winning author Jane Godwin, a thought-provoking novel about young teens navigating friendship and trust in a post-pandemic world of surveillance and control.

running late
drop it off without me
I type drop what off? I don’t know what Mish is talking about.
While I’m typing, another message appears. don’t tell bella
But I am Bella.

Best friends Bella and Connie live on the outskirts of the city in an area that was once full of open fields and paddocks but is changing as the suburbs creep closer. And now there is Mish, Connie’s cousin, who has to be included even though she is unfriendly and unpredictable. The pandemic lockdowns have lifted, and the three teens are eager to explore their newfound independence. But with the world opening up, there has been a rise in surveillance, from apps that track their movements to voice recorders and hidden cameras. It feels like everyone is watching them. But when does ‘watching’ become ‘watching over’?

Do we have a right to know everything about those we love? Look Me in the Eye is a gripping tale of young teens navigating freedom and trust-building, privacy and secrets, in an era of parental surveillance.

~*~

Bella Jamison is thirteen, and in her first year of high school – back in a classroom after two years of being in and out of lockdowns and remote learning in Melbourne. She’s in the same class as her best friend Connie, and Connie’s cousin Mish. Mish is a year older and has just moved to the area – and she’s not someone that Bella trusts or feels comfortable around. But even though Mish is unfriendly and unpredictable, Bella and Connie have to include her because she has no friends, isn’t allowed to see her old friends, and Connie’s parents, aunt and uncle think Connie and Bella will be a good influence on her – especially now that their world has opened up in the lockdown free days. But they’ve spent two years locked inside, their lives lived largely online, and they’ve witnessed a rise in surveillance of their lives. Cameras, apps, and voice recorders.

As Mish spends more time with Connie and Bella, the surveillance she is under from her father becomes clear, and she’ll do anything to take back control – any sort of control, to have some freedom. Even if it means breaking the law. Connie is held up by her family as a good kid example – the healthy kid that her little sister, Junie isn’t. The trustworthy kid that Mish isn’t. And Bella is thrust into this world – caught between loyalty to her friend and loyalty to her family as trust is tested, and privacy and secrets aren’t what they once were.

Look Me In the Eye examines the grip that technology and surveillance on our lives, and the ways that it has invaded our homes, and what this means. Bella’s family tries to live as much as they can away from apps and surveillance – her mother and stepfather trust her, and don’t want to watch her all the time like Mish’s father does to her. These three girls are caught in a world where they are affected by what is online -they don’t want to miss out, but it has been adversely affecting them. So what Jane Godwin does is ask how far has our reliance on technology and surveillance gone through the eyes of three teenagers whose lives were significantly altered during COVID, and through Bella, Connie and Mish, as readers we see how everyone of all ages has been affected by COVID restrictions and lockdowns in varying degrees, and looked at how isolation affected people and how being able to remain connected to friends as Connie and Bella could helped them cope.

These days, it feels like parental surveillance is heightened as technology and its place in our lives has grown and changed, compared to growing up in the decades prior to what is going on today – even in the early 2000s, it didn’t feel like there were these levels of surveillance in the days before apps could easily be installed, though I’m sure there were ways people were tracked. Jane Godwin has captured Bella’s world perfectly – a child caught between friends, parents who trust her, the ravages of technology, and adults who don’t trust her as well as the changes in how her mother raised and kept an eye on her, compared to how her mother and stepfather will be looking after her new sibling – though they’re quite a relaxed couple, and this made the scenes with them felt relaxing but at times, tense, particularly when Bella wanted to open up but felt like she couldn’t. I felt it showed the tension of a world under constant surveillance, and what this means for families, friendships and individuals, what drives people to do this and their justifications, and how people react to it, and how they get away from it – including making other people lie for them.

I found the way Bella and Connie dealt with things to be realistic. They didn’t want to upset Mish or their parents, and they wanted to trust Mish. Yet they also knew what Mish was making them do was wrong – and it was very brave of them to finally admit what was going on so they could maintain trust with their parents as the climax grew and things came to a head. It was a thoughtful book, one that makes us all examine how much we rely on technology and how we use it, and what we use it for with a mystery and story of friendship at its heart whilst examining how the way we watch people can affect our relationships with them and how surveillance can affect someone’s mental and physical health. Jane Godwin has captured the feelings of each of the girls perfectly and shown that sometimes, you need to let people have freedom and not control their lives too much.