What Unbreakable Looks Like

ETA: My amazing friend Leelynn read and reviewed this book recently and had such important things to say about it, so please check her review out, too.

Given that sex trafficking is such an under-discussed topic that affects so many teens around the world, What Unbreakable Looks Like had endless amounts of potential to be a new favorite for me. I love when authors are willing to tackle dark, important topics such as this — when it's done well. Unfortunately, this story was quite the disappointing reading experience.

First of all, the writing wasn't a good fit for me. The dialogue is clunky and unnatural, the pacing is off (and incredibly rushed in the beginning), and the characters feel flat. Lex as a narrator is immensely frustrating because, despite all of these terrible and difficult things happening to her, her emotional responses feel wholly absent. She talks about reacting in certain ways but there's never any weight to it. It's honestly rare that I've met a main character who struck me as so singularly one-dimensional.

The other issue I had was the author's usage of AAVE. A bit of slang is one thing, but when your narrator changes into a weird bastardization of AAVE every time she wants to make herself sound “tough” or edgy, I'm really uncomfortable with that — especially when it's to such a degree that it feels like a caricature, as is the case here. I saw so few other reviewers fret over the depiction of AAVE & Black characters in this book that I almost second-guessed myself, but I know when something feels wrong in my gut.

I have more to say that can't be said here, so if you'd like to read the rest of my thoughts, you can do that HERE on my blog.