Reviews

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

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sannedijk's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

simply, one, if not, the best book i have ever read, painfully beautiful written

ball's review against another edition

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dark sad

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

This book really taught me the difference between a well written book and a good book.
Because even though this book is written well, I wou dn't recommend it to my worst enemy.
I don't understand why so many people anjoyed this book. Never in my life did I cry whilr reading a book from actual terror of never ending terrible descriptions.
And for what?

So at the end the author could scribble something about kindness even though it was all Harold gave Jude, and still he killed himself.
So how being kind help? The only conclusion to draw from this book is maybe - everything is hopeless and nothing can be helped
Or - don't rape children
Noted, didn't need a whole 800 paged book for that.
So someone who genuinely enjoyed this book please explain why to me

Content Warnings

jesscarts's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

themrshedrick816's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

From the reviews I’ve read you either love this book or you hate it. Hate is a strong word, but I really didn’t like this book. It was traumatic and sad and every time you thought it was looking up and happy things were happening, nope, sad and traumatic again. I read another review that said the Author was intentionally giving the main character an awful life and that was the point of the book. I don’t think I would have loved it if there had been a happy ending but the self-sabotage and heartbreak throughout was just too much for me. If you like sad emotional reads, give it a try but I recommend anyone who reads this to look up and read the trigger warnings because there’s is a lot of them and they go into a lot of detail. I considered putting this on my DNF list and I regret that didn’t just quit because it wasn’t worth it for me.

Content Warnings