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melbsreads 's review for:

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
1.0
challenging dark medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content warnings: child sexual abuse, rape, graphic animal death, racism, colonialism, misogyny, paedophilia, suicide, dementia, medical content

I...........do not understand why this book has as many high ratings as it does. Like, call me crazy but no amount of compelling writing can get me to look past graphic and repeated child sexual abuse and a story told from the perspective of the perpetrator. 

Add in a metric fuckton of animal death and a lot of REALLY visceral descriptions that genuinely turned my stomach and EIGHTY PAGE CHAPTERS and this was just really aggressively not for me. It was, in essence, everything I dislike about lit fic in one book. 

(And before you ask why I didn't DNF it if I was hating it so much, it's because it's mostly set in Micronesia and therefore allowed me to tick a box for my Read Around the World challenge)