Come vi avevo già anticipato martedì, dopo quella in italiano oggi è il giorno della recensione in inglese in occasione del blogtour.
First of all, thanks to Meghan from Wednesday Books for sending me via NetGalley an eARC in exchange for a honest review.You have to know English isn’t my first language, so feel free to correct me if I make some mistakes while writing this review.
Title: What Unbreakable Looks Like
Author: Kate McLaughlin
Publication Date: June 23th 2020
Pages: 336 (Kindle Edition)
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2Y7wrSx
Plot: Lex was taken – trafficked - and now she’s Poppy. Kept in a hotel with other girls, her old life is a distant memory. But when the girls are rescued, she doesn’t quite know how to be Lex again.
After she moves in with her aunt and uncle, for the first time in a long time, she knows what it is to feel truly safe. Except, she doesn’t trust it. Doesn't trust her new home. Doesn’t trust her new friend. Doesn’t trust her new life. Instead she trusts what she shouldn’t because that's what feels right. She doesn’t deserve good things.
But when she is sexually assaulted by her so-called boyfriend and his friends, Lex is forced to reckon with what happened to her and that just because she is used to it, doesn’t mean it is okay. She’s thrust into the limelight and realizes she has the power to help others. But first she’ll have to confront the monsters of her past with the help of her family, friends, and a new love.
Kate McLaughlin’s What Unbreakable Looks Like is a gritty, ultimately hopeful novel about human trafficking through the lens of a girl who has escaped the life and learned to trust, not only others, but in herself.
CONTENT WARNING: human trafficking, exploitation of prostitution, child pornography, violence, sexual abuse, slut-shaming, miscarriage, drugs, Stockholm syndrome.
TRIGGER WARNING: rape, self-harm (cutting), suicide attempt (mentioned).
Lex was convinced that she wouldn't have lived enough to be eighteen.
This is because her mother has always cared more about alcohol and how to get even more of it other than caring about who circled around her daughter so that's how Lex became Poppy - one of the many girls who work for Mitch, who sells their body to anyone willing to pay. Anyone.
Closed in a motel room with other girls and forced to have sex - forced to be raped - numb and stoned by the drugs that Mitch gives them to keep them pliable and that they use to dissociate themselves from what men do with their bodies, Lex no longer even thinks of escape. To go where, anyway? She - like all the other girls - depends on Mitch for food, a roof over her head and especially her beloved pills.
It's a bit of a shock when the police raid the motel, but not so much: it's not the first time, they know they have to keep their mouths shut and sooner or later they'll go back to Mitch - or he'll pick them up. The cops say they saved them and Poppy is already looking for the right opportunity to escape together with Ivy - the only one of the girls who is closest to her, the only one who initially insisted that they call each other with their real names not to forget who they were before but now she has also surrendered to what is their life - when what once was a beloved aunt, her mother's younger sister, comes to the hospital. And Aunt Krys really seems to want to keep Lex with her - with all the trauma, the shame, the scars, the nightmares, the distrust she carries with her.
A part of Poppy is always ready to escape, but Krys' presence has awakened Lex - and Krys wants to offer her a life again. But how can you trust something as ephemeral as hope? How can you believe what looks like just nice words? How can you believe that they won't ask you for anything in return? How can you believe that it is unconditional affection? Why not go back to the life with Mitch which, however horrible, still offers certainties?
Lex decides to try it, to find out if she can still trust someone, if she is not too damaged inside to be able to still feel feelings for someone - Lex decides to find out if she really can deserve a good life.
But old ways of thinking are hard to get rid of, it's easier to let yourself go before what you already know - including the sex that inevitably leads Lex to dissociate during the act because it has become something automatic in her mind and sex is devoid of any value. But when the boy she confided in uses her story to take advantage of her in one of the worst possible ways, Lex realizes it's time to say enough is enough - to break the circle.
What Unbreakable Looks Like is undoubtedly a novel with an admirable intent, capable of highlighting what is actually an industry: the trafficking of girls, often minors, held hostage and sold for sex. The brutal way in which they are dehumanized finds a place here, with Mitch depriving them of their names and identities to shape them as he and all his "customers" like. Unfortunately, there are many like Mitch out there and it's a difficult mechanism to stop because there's a lot of money involved and people who help these men get away with it because it's convenient for them too.
And above all, very few girls manage to return to normal lives because if they aren't beaten and killed by some client or their pimps, they are often the ones who decide to stay because of the drugs or because they don't know another life except that one - and without an adequate support system such as rehab, therapy and family it's unlikely that they'll remain sober.
Lex is one of the lucky ones, even if lucky is definitely not what she feels like - at least at the beginning - and she refuses to be identified as a victim or survivor.
Through Lex we discover how easy it's for certain pimps to attract girls to their web - and sometimes it's not just girls who come from complicated family backgrounds, sometimes it only takes a party or a classmate. We discover the mechanisms that these girls adopt to survive that life, we read about its ugliness and you can't help thinking about how many girls are lost out there.
But I must say that no matter how strong the themes and the touching topic were, I didn't feel very emotionally involved with Lex. I didn't find it strange that Lex didn't react very badly in the presence of boys and men because Hermione in Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston also reacted in the same way.
I think the problem is mostly that Lex talks about how she feels and her emotions, but you don't really see her feel them. The dissociation, the anger, the anguish, the panic ... we are told that they are there, Lex tells us that she feels them but I didn't feel them personally - they didn't hit me in the stomach like they had in the past when I read other books. I may have felt more anger and outrage than her when the whole school learns of her past and takes sides with her attackers, telling her that she hadn't really been forced to do so since she's a whore - proving they don't understand at all the horrors Lex has experienced and they're not even trying.
The book is fast where it should be slow and vice versa.
In a short time Lex is saved, she goes to rehab, she goes to live with her aunt, she makes friends with a girl and a boy, she's attacked and there's more that happens but I won't say since I don't want to spoiler. These parts perhaps should've been longer and instead are treated faster than other parts that didn't need a slower pace. One of the flaws is that everything takes place within a few months when, personally, it would take years for me to even thinking of granting my trust to someone.
And it will certainly be because I haven't read the finished copy, but there wasn't a clean separation when the setting changed from one conversation to another and I often had to reread to understand that the scene had changed - also the flashbacks of Lex's past in the motel with Ivy and the other girls could have been better distributed within the narrative. Or maybe, I repeat, it was my unfinished copy that didn't highlight the gap between one scene and another.
However, I really appreciated Lex's support system: her aunt Krys who stays close without hovering over her too much and her best friend Elsa who reminds her that she's not the only one to have had a difficult life, but nonetheless she's very protective of Lex. Zack is also really wonderful, an example of how all boys should be. There's also the demonstration that a pet's unconditional love can really save a life.
And this was what Lex needed: unconditional love devoid of any judgment to start healing from the terrible traumas of the her past and discovering that precisely Poppy - the girl she used to be - led her to have a life again.
What Unbreakable Looks Like is a novel with a really powerful message, which is raw and blatantly honest about the bad things girls trafficked have to face. Perhaps it fails just a little in its execution - at least for me on a emotional level - but it surely leaves the reader to think about it and to hope that all the girls out there are one day saved. That one day they can truly be unbreakable without having to bend over in front of anyone.
Author: Kate McLaughlin
Publication Date: June 23th 2020
Pages: 336 (Kindle Edition)
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2Y7wrSx
Plot: Lex was taken – trafficked - and now she’s Poppy. Kept in a hotel with other girls, her old life is a distant memory. But when the girls are rescued, she doesn’t quite know how to be Lex again.
After she moves in with her aunt and uncle, for the first time in a long time, she knows what it is to feel truly safe. Except, she doesn’t trust it. Doesn't trust her new home. Doesn’t trust her new friend. Doesn’t trust her new life. Instead she trusts what she shouldn’t because that's what feels right. She doesn’t deserve good things.
But when she is sexually assaulted by her so-called boyfriend and his friends, Lex is forced to reckon with what happened to her and that just because she is used to it, doesn’t mean it is okay. She’s thrust into the limelight and realizes she has the power to help others. But first she’ll have to confront the monsters of her past with the help of her family, friends, and a new love.
Kate McLaughlin’s What Unbreakable Looks Like is a gritty, ultimately hopeful novel about human trafficking through the lens of a girl who has escaped the life and learned to trust, not only others, but in herself.
--- ---
CONTENT WARNING: human trafficking, exploitation of prostitution, child pornography, violence, sexual abuse, slut-shaming, miscarriage, drugs, Stockholm syndrome.
TRIGGER WARNING: rape, self-harm (cutting), suicide attempt (mentioned).
Lex was convinced that she wouldn't have lived enough to be eighteen.
This is because her mother has always cared more about alcohol and how to get even more of it other than caring about who circled around her daughter so that's how Lex became Poppy - one of the many girls who work for Mitch, who sells their body to anyone willing to pay. Anyone.
Closed in a motel room with other girls and forced to have sex - forced to be raped - numb and stoned by the drugs that Mitch gives them to keep them pliable and that they use to dissociate themselves from what men do with their bodies, Lex no longer even thinks of escape. To go where, anyway? She - like all the other girls - depends on Mitch for food, a roof over her head and especially her beloved pills.
It's a bit of a shock when the police raid the motel, but not so much: it's not the first time, they know they have to keep their mouths shut and sooner or later they'll go back to Mitch - or he'll pick them up. The cops say they saved them and Poppy is already looking for the right opportunity to escape together with Ivy - the only one of the girls who is closest to her, the only one who initially insisted that they call each other with their real names not to forget who they were before but now she has also surrendered to what is their life - when what once was a beloved aunt, her mother's younger sister, comes to the hospital. And Aunt Krys really seems to want to keep Lex with her - with all the trauma, the shame, the scars, the nightmares, the distrust she carries with her.
A part of Poppy is always ready to escape, but Krys' presence has awakened Lex - and Krys wants to offer her a life again. But how can you trust something as ephemeral as hope? How can you believe what looks like just nice words? How can you believe that they won't ask you for anything in return? How can you believe that it is unconditional affection? Why not go back to the life with Mitch which, however horrible, still offers certainties?
Lex decides to try it, to find out if she can still trust someone, if she is not too damaged inside to be able to still feel feelings for someone - Lex decides to find out if she really can deserve a good life.
But old ways of thinking are hard to get rid of, it's easier to let yourself go before what you already know - including the sex that inevitably leads Lex to dissociate during the act because it has become something automatic in her mind and sex is devoid of any value. But when the boy she confided in uses her story to take advantage of her in one of the worst possible ways, Lex realizes it's time to say enough is enough - to break the circle.
What Unbreakable Looks Like is undoubtedly a novel with an admirable intent, capable of highlighting what is actually an industry: the trafficking of girls, often minors, held hostage and sold for sex. The brutal way in which they are dehumanized finds a place here, with Mitch depriving them of their names and identities to shape them as he and all his "customers" like. Unfortunately, there are many like Mitch out there and it's a difficult mechanism to stop because there's a lot of money involved and people who help these men get away with it because it's convenient for them too.
And above all, very few girls manage to return to normal lives because if they aren't beaten and killed by some client or their pimps, they are often the ones who decide to stay because of the drugs or because they don't know another life except that one - and without an adequate support system such as rehab, therapy and family it's unlikely that they'll remain sober.
Lex is one of the lucky ones, even if lucky is definitely not what she feels like - at least at the beginning - and she refuses to be identified as a victim or survivor.
Through Lex we discover how easy it's for certain pimps to attract girls to their web - and sometimes it's not just girls who come from complicated family backgrounds, sometimes it only takes a party or a classmate. We discover the mechanisms that these girls adopt to survive that life, we read about its ugliness and you can't help thinking about how many girls are lost out there.
But I must say that no matter how strong the themes and the touching topic were, I didn't feel very emotionally involved with Lex. I didn't find it strange that Lex didn't react very badly in the presence of boys and men because Hermione in Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston also reacted in the same way.
I think the problem is mostly that Lex talks about how she feels and her emotions, but you don't really see her feel them. The dissociation, the anger, the anguish, the panic ... we are told that they are there, Lex tells us that she feels them but I didn't feel them personally - they didn't hit me in the stomach like they had in the past when I read other books. I may have felt more anger and outrage than her when the whole school learns of her past and takes sides with her attackers, telling her that she hadn't really been forced to do so since she's a whore - proving they don't understand at all the horrors Lex has experienced and they're not even trying.
The book is fast where it should be slow and vice versa.
In a short time Lex is saved, she goes to rehab, she goes to live with her aunt, she makes friends with a girl and a boy, she's attacked and there's more that happens but I won't say since I don't want to spoiler. These parts perhaps should've been longer and instead are treated faster than other parts that didn't need a slower pace. One of the flaws is that everything takes place within a few months when, personally, it would take years for me to even thinking of granting my trust to someone.
And it will certainly be because I haven't read the finished copy, but there wasn't a clean separation when the setting changed from one conversation to another and I often had to reread to understand that the scene had changed - also the flashbacks of Lex's past in the motel with Ivy and the other girls could have been better distributed within the narrative. Or maybe, I repeat, it was my unfinished copy that didn't highlight the gap between one scene and another.
However, I really appreciated Lex's support system: her aunt Krys who stays close without hovering over her too much and her best friend Elsa who reminds her that she's not the only one to have had a difficult life, but nonetheless she's very protective of Lex. Zack is also really wonderful, an example of how all boys should be. There's also the demonstration that a pet's unconditional love can really save a life.
And this was what Lex needed: unconditional love devoid of any judgment to start healing from the terrible traumas of the her past and discovering that precisely Poppy - the girl she used to be - led her to have a life again.
What Unbreakable Looks Like is a novel with a really powerful message, which is raw and blatantly honest about the bad things girls trafficked have to face. Perhaps it fails just a little in its execution - at least for me on a emotional level - but it surely leaves the reader to think about it and to hope that all the girls out there are one day saved. That one day they can truly be unbreakable without having to bend over in front of anyone.
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