Praise for Pieces of Me:
2024 White Pine Award Winner
Book Riot, "Spring 2023 YA Books You’ll Want to TBR ASAP"
The Nerd Daily, "YA Book Releases To Add To Your TBR In 2023"
Quill & Quire, "2023 Spring Preview: Books for Young Readers"
"[An] empathetic portrait of a mental health condition. McLaughlin deftly integrates and fleshes out the various alters [in this] respectful and well-researched exploration of one teenager’s experience living with dissociative identity disorder." - Publishers Weekly
"With humor and insight, the author writes a compelling narrative that is unique and fascinating...a powerful story that sheds light on a serious mental condition." - School Library Journal
"Compulsively readable story... a compelling and intriguing YA suspense/mystery about mental illness." - Young Adult Books Central
"Pieces of Me paves some much-needed new ground in the young adult fiction space." - Paste Magazine, "The Best New YA Books of April 2023"
“Pieces of Me is a chilling, yet empathetic, look into Dissociative Identity Disorder. With her calm, pure, voice, Kate McLaughlin delves deep into the crevices of this misunderstood disorder and a young woman's mind. I had to keep reading not only to understand Dylan, the main character—but to understand all of the people inside Dylan’s head." - Hayley Krischer, author of Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf and The Falling Girls
Praise for Daughter:
2023 ITW Thriller Award Finalist
2023 White Pine Award Nominee
A Top Ten YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers
"A dark, surprisingly moving tale... Packed with great characters and a plot that often feels a little too much like real life, Daughter also manages to ask thoughtful questions about complicity, agency, and what justice really looks like." - Paste Magazine, "The Best New YA Books of March 2022"
“A chilling story of victimization, shame, and the casualties of crime, McLaughlin explores the myriad of emotions involved in discovering a heinous truth, and the obligation one can feel to fight for those who no longer can. Haunting and memorable, this book is perfect for true-crime junkies.” - Laurie Faria Stolarz, bestselling author of The Last Secret You’ll Ever Keep
Praise for What Unbreakable Looks Like:
2022 White Pine Award Winner
A YALSA 2021 Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers
"This shines a light on a little-talked-about topic that involves teens." - Booklist (Starred Review)
"This story of resilience and recovery is gritty and heavy but ultimately hopeful... A gut-punch story with an uplifting ending." - Kirkus
"[A] beautiful insight into what it means to heal and have hope. ...If you are wanting a heartwarming, heartbreaking, inspiring, and hard hitting story, I would definitely recommend you pick this book up." - The Nerd Daily
"Gritty and moving, What Unbreakable Looks Like is a compelling story about recovery and the problem of human trafficking that persists today." - Young Adult Books Central
"With unflinching honesty, What Unbreakable Looks Like exposes the injuries and scars we wear on our skins or in our souls. Hidden damage is tragically common, but helpful others who dared embrace hope invite Alexa to step onto the healing path. This novel may offer a springboard for a reader's own healing or foster empathy for life's walking wounded." - Liz Coley, author of international bestseller Pretty Girl-13
"Raw, unflinching, and authentic, Kate McLaughlin's thoughtful What Unbreakable Looks Like carefully crafts a story exposing the vulnerability of underage trafficked girls and what it takes to begin the process of healing from sexual trauma." - Christa Desir, author, advocate, and founding member of The Voices and Faces Project
“This is a powerful book about a sobering topic that I found myself thinking about for days after I completed it. It is wonderfully poignant, painfully real, and even laugh out loud funny at times. Not everyone can truly wrap their minds around the trauma these victims endure and yet somehow, despite all of it, are still just regular kids. But Kate McLaughlin gets it. ‘Lex’ is truly what unbreakable looks like and you’ll fall in love with her spirit.” - Tanya Compagnone, Trooper First Class
“Sex trafficking continues to seep into all our communities. In this novel, Kate McLaughlin brings to life the trauma that transpires in youth who forced into the life of sex trafficking. Her novel is a reminder that each of us can make a difference in someone’s life.” - Dina R. St. George, MSW, Juvenile Re-Entry Unit OCPD
05/01/2023
Gr 10 Up—Dylan knows what it feels like to black out from drinking. For the past year, while she's taken college courses in art school, she's made it a point to stop abusing alcohol in order to stay on top of her precarious mental state. So, when she wakes up in a strange boy's apartment one morning, she is baffled. Though Connor and his roommate Jess seem comfortable with Dylan, she has no recollection of how she got there. Doing her best to pretend, she finds her way back to her New Rochelle home, where her famous actress mother and twin brother live. As she struggles to make sense of the troubling events of the past few days, Dylan, who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, feels a deeper sense of panic bubbling within her mind. When additional unexplainable events occur, one that is life-threatening, a new diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder takes over her world as she grapples with how to move forward. McLaughlin has created in-depth characters and a compelling plot to highlight this mental disorder. Dylan (who is white) and her best friend Izzy (who is Black) share typical young adult moments but also work together to uncover the truth behind Dylan's condition. With humor and insight, the author writes a compelling narrative that is unique and fascinating. There are a few sexual encounters, and triggers include suicide and memories of sexual abuse. VERDICT A powerful story that sheds light on a serious mental condition. Recommended for mature teens.—Karin Greenberg
2023-01-12
When art student Dylan blacks out and loses three days of her memory, the life she’s struggling to hold together begins to splinter and change.
Hospitalized after what appears to be a suicide attempt and diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, she embarks on a difficult path to finding peace with her condition, her alternate personalities, and herself, exploring what it means to live a life where you’re not the only person inside your own head. Insecure yet resilient, Dylan is easy to root for, if sometimes underdeveloped as a character beyond her diagnosis. Her traumas are largely presented with care, and her “alters” are given humanity in their own rights. She has a supportive and nonjudgmental network of loved ones and an accepting romantic interest, valuable and still too rare elements in stories about serious mental illness. But Dylan’s journey through the psychiatric system is unrealistically smooth, coming across as textbook and well-meaningly educational. This is combined with elements that make other parts of the novel read like a thriller in their explorations of Dylan’s psyche and its mysteries. The result is an occasionally uncomfortable clash in tone. However, for a condition often given deeply offensive representation, the book does pave new ground, if unevenly, and promotes a message of hope. Main characters read White.
Informs and educates despite some uneven execution. (further research) (Fiction. 14-18)
