The next gut-punching, compulsively readable Kate McLaughlin novel, about a girl finding strength in not being alone.
When eighteen-year-old Dylan wakes up, she’s in an apartment she doesn’t recognize. The other people there seem to know her, but she doesn't know them – not even the pretty, chiseled boy who tells her his name is Connor. A voice inside her head keeps saying that everything is okay, but Dylan can’t help but freak out. Especially when she borrows Connor’s phone to call home and realizes she’s been missing for three days.
Dylan has lost time before, but never like this.
Soon after, Dylan is diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and must grapple not only with the many people currently crammed inside her head, but that a secret from her past so terrible she’s blocked it out has put them there. Her only distraction is a budding new relationship with Connor. But as she gets closer to finding out the truth, Dylan wonders: will it heal her or fracture her further?
Kate McLaughlin’s Pieces of Me is raw, intimate, and surprisingly hopeful.
I don't know anything about the psychology of DID, so I can't comment on that aspect of the book, but the author's note states that Kate did a lot of research and talked to both people with DID and practitioners experienced in treating it. Presumably that means it's accurate, I just can't comment on that.
As a teen novel, it's an interesting read. There are a lot of kinds of relationship on view here. Connor, the love interest, is almost too perfect to be true. Much more interesting to me was Dylan's relationship with Max, her twin brother, which had up and downs but ultimately a strong base. Dylan and her mother had a good relationship as well.
I found the different alters interesting and would have enjoyed spending more time getting to know them. The journal was a clever mechanism to let us spend some time in their point of view, and I would have liked some more of that - but of course, this isn't really their story, it's Dylan's.
Overall I enjoyed this, and I recommend it to other readers. I can't wait to see what other people think, and I'll be watching out for more of Kate's work - she's good at contemporary stories and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.
Pieces of Me publishes on the 18th April, 2023. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
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