Four college friends are followed in the novel A Little Life as they relocate to New York in quest of fame and money. They are broke, lost, and supported only by their friendship and ambition. The men's dedication to the bright, enigmatic Jude, a man damaged by an awful childhood experience, keeps them together as their relationships, which are tainted with addiction, success, and pride, develop through the years. Hanya Yanagihara's breathtaking novel is about the families we are born into and the ones we create for ourselves. It is a hymn to brotherly relationships and a magnificent portrait of love in the twenty-first century.

This book is 800 pages of sheer suffering, so how can I claim to have loved it? Am I even still sane? I can't say anything right now because I'm still trying to catch my breath from crying so hard, holy shit.

Hanya Yanagihara spent around 75% of the book developing the characters and attempting to make us feel connected to them, only for her to totally demolish them and make us suffer alongside them? I adored every single character, with the possible exception of JB; the way it handled trauma was AMAZING. The story does a fantastic job of capturing how trauma from childhood influences a person's adulthood. It was difficult not to fall in love with the characters since they were all so realistic and beautifully written.

I found Jude to be quite relatable (don't ask), and I was crushed by the finale. I've never had such a strong connection to a character as I did with him. Despite the awful nature of his conclusion, I'm still delighted that he was able to find the love he deserved. He has gone through hell and back, and I WILL protect him at all costs >:(.