Don’t Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon Book Review

The novel I am reading, Don’t Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon, connects with the socioeconomic aspect, the main aspect that I have seen in my book is education which is strongly shown through the two main characters Noa and Peter. Noa is a 16 year old, foster child, who recently left the system and went out on her own using a fake foster family to trick the system. Noa only went to 5 months of High School while she lived with her last foster family. After that she received no other education and lived by herself. She lives off of odd jobs and money from the system, for an occupation she helps major companies make their online security a lot better because she is an excellent hacker. Peter on the other hand is a 17 year old, rich kid who lives in a mansion and goes to a private school, because of his private school education he has a better opportunity to go to college and get a great job compared to his partner (Noa) throughout this trilogy. 

Another great example of socioeconomic throughout the book is privilege. During his life Peter grew up having everything given to him on a silver platter, especially after his brother died of PEMA, his parents did this to overcompensate for being absent from the vast majority of his life because of working so much. With all this privilege Peter tends to be naive towards the world and he thinks his life is absolutely perfect. He also pushes his luck by stealing liquor from his parents, hacking security firms, partying day and night as long as he maintains his grades and stays in school. One day this all changes and Peter isn't so privileged, he gets kicked out of his house with no car, phone, computer, and just a bag of clothes. He also loses his girlfriend and almost gets killed multiple times. Noa grew up not so privileged; she has been beaten, put through the system, went to juvie, and has lived by herself for some time. With the lack of privilege she has gotten throughout her 16 years of life, she tends to be a lot more pessimistic with her view of life always looking for the worse in people. This makes her quite skeptical of her friendship with Peter, and many other people that enter her life. She tends to overthink and trusts no one around her, she is often alone in life until Peter comes along.