A review by booksandboba
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

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

1.5

Reviews I’ve read everywhere talk about how much readers cried while reading this book. I didn’t cry at all. Does that make me heartless? I don’t know. It didn’t have as great of an emotional impact on me as I was expecting, although I think perhaps I numbed out from all of my personal triggers that were in the book. PLEASE READ THE TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNINGS. I didn’t and realized too late,, luckily I’m in a better mental state because this book would have been horrible for me otherwise.

I feel like I don’t know what I’m supposed to take away from this book. What did I learn?
It was far from inspiring… I suppose part of the point was to show just how great of an impact abuse has on a person, but it’s hard to read if you have any history of abuse or mental illness etc because it just makes you feel hopeless and like you will never get better.
 

I did appreciate the theme of friendship and relationships in the book, though. Some aspects of the book felt predictable.

Maybe you’d like the book, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, of course because of all the content warnings, but also because I personally felt like I had wasted a month reading this book. I didn’t necessarily hate it nor did I hate it while reading, it just didn’t really leave me feeling any sort of satisfaction or like I learned something or have a greater understanding of anything.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings