saraknyghte 's review for:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

3.0

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I so wanted and expected this book to be a 5 stars. It’s written very beautifully and started out so well. I love a sad book with a sad ending, but this was so unrealistically sad that it felt unintelligent even though I can tell by the writing, the author is very intelligent. I think if Jude’s miserable background was narrowed down to like 10% of what was written, it would have been a much more impactful book. I also went into this book thinking it was going to be very lgbt forward, but I found it extremely harmful and a poor representation of the gay community. Every character that is gay in this book is just straight up evil. Even Jude’s friend, JB is portrayed as the bad friend with a drug addiction, is extremely rude and insensitive to his friends, and crosses boundaries without consent. The protagonist, Jude is not even gay. He’s asexual if anything and has a boyfriend whom has sex almost exclusively with women