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Short & Sweet Summary

What Unbreakable Looks Like by Kate McLaughlin is a heartbreaking and raw telling of a teenager who was sex trafficked. Lex became Poppy the moment she met Mitch, an attractive young man who bought her gifts and made her feel special.

After she was convinced that they were in love, he conned her into have sex with a single man to help pay off a debt that he had racked up, making it seem like she was saving his life. Being in love with Mitch, of course Lex did it.

This happened a few times before he brought her to the apartment building where his business was run. She became Poppy that day. After the apartment manager figured out what was happening, the manager kicked them out.

Mitch took his flowers to the motel that would eventually be raided. Poppy was given her name back after experiencing the horrors of sex trafficking (and it gets detailed), but she’s not sure she wants to take it.

The trauma equipped her with loads of trust issues and an addiction to medication Mitch would give her to make her docile with his clients. Lex decides to accept her old name back and try to integrate back into society, but it proves much harder than it seems.

What Unbreakable Looks Like by Kate McLaughlin has many trigger warnings. This book contains graphic content about sexual trafficking, loads of foul language, sexual assault, violence, and trigger warnings for anyone who has experienced trauma.

First Impressions

I was scared to request this. This is one of the amazing ARCs that I received from NetGalley in return for an honest review, so I’d like to thank Kate McLaughlin, St. Martin’s Press, Wednesday Books, and NetGalley for allowing me to read this.

However, like I said, I was scared to request it. I knew from the description that this book would be deep and difficult to read. I don’t have sexual trafficking trauma, but I do have experience with trauma in general.

I knew that I needed to read this story for some reason, though. It seeped into my bones and kept whispering in my ear until I finally hit the ‘request’ button. I’m glad I did. It was a difficult read, I’m not going to lie.

What Unbreakable Looks Like was read in small chunks because this is not a binge-able book. It was too much for me to read in a short period of time. The writing is fantastic and pulls you in, but the content is dark and twisted enough to keep my mind from fully immersing me (coping mechanism for trauma, I’m sure).

I thought the cover was gorgeous and the topic was intriguing because I don’t know a ton about sex trafficking. This book taught me so much about the life... too much. There were parts of this that broke my heart. I want to do a book talk about this, but it’s not out yet, so I don’t want to release content that would spoil anything.

Emotional Connection & Character Arcs

I was on the verge of tears throughout this entire novel. Each time my eyes welled was for a different reason. That’s how good Lex’s character arc is. She starts off the story as Poppy, a teenager who is being sexually trafficked. It’s rough to read because of how raw this story is. McLaughlin doesn’t hold anything back and you feel each scene hit you in the face.

Then, she gets rescued by the police and there’s her knee-jerk reaction to run back to Mitch, her pimp. He brainwashed his “flowers” well enough to make them desperate to go back to the life, despite how they are treated. It’s heartbreaking.

Then, we see Lex start to emerge as a different person. She makes friends and even tries to be in a relationship. We see the heartbreak that happens when someone breaks her newfound trust and the legal battle that she takes when she decides that she wants to do something more for herself. It’s inspiring and left me weeping through the entire novel.

Because my eyes couldn’t stay dry, I had to read this one in chunks. It took me double the amount of time it normally does to read through a book because I couldn’t take too much of it in one sitting.

Writing Style

Like I mentioned before, What Unbreakable Looks Like is raw. There’s curse words, sexual abuse, violence, and much more that comes along with sex trafficking. This is a story that needed to be told, but it doesn’t make it any easier to read it.

The reason I gave it 4/5 stars instead of 5/5 is because of personal taste. I’m a stickler with pacing and I felt like there were some minor pacing issues in this one. There were quite a few scenes that I felt should’ve been fleshed out more. I made a note in the book, which I never really do, about how summer seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, even though there were noteworthy things happening. We are told a lot of the scenes happened without actually living through them with the characters.

I play a drinking game when I read young adult novels. Whenever I read a sentence that mentions someone releasing a breath that they didn’t know they were holding, I take a shot. It’s one of the most cliché lines in YA fiction, so I don’t see it much anymore. I haven’t had to take a shot in a long time.

I had to take two shots while reading this book.

Should You Read It?

Yes. Despite the pacing issues and some minor personal taste writing style problems, I thoroughly believe that every human should read this because of how raw the story is written. It’s an important story that is based off of real events that are happening right now. We need to become more aware of sexual trafficking and I applaud Kate McLaughlin for taking the time to do the painstaking research it took to write this novel.

#netgalley, #katemclaughlin, #stmartinspress #wednesdaybooks #tearjercker, #ARC