I have two. The Ritual and Drowning.
The Ritual is pure smut. 61 chapters and every one contains a graphic, demeaning sex scene. I’m convinced the author was an adult film screenwriter and decided to try their hand at writing a novel. There isn’t a single likable character in this book.
Drowning isn’t a great work of literature. I felt that the characters were very two-dimensional. I hated how naive the author made the protagonist. It made me have a lack of sympathy for her. The ending was series finale of Dexter bad.
A Little Life always gets people divided… either you absolutely love it or hate it. It’s just such a long one that I’m not sure it’s worth the risk.
Why didn’t you like it?
Good writing, but the storyline was basically #hurtfic #angstfic #comfortfic if you’re familiar with fan fiction - it was clearly a woman writing her fetishes about gay male pain.
I loved A Little Life but people describe it as trauma p*rn. It’s sad thing after sad thing, the characters just cannot catch a break. I love a sad book so I enjoyed it but I can understand why others don’t.
To echo what other people said, I feel like the book got to the point where the pain was never ending and almost cartoonish. I described the plot to a friend and it sounds so ridiculous when summarized because every bad thing that could possibly happen to someone happens to the MC. I do think the prose is beautiful, but to me, it felt like a sad book just to make you sad vs a sad book that explored other themes within the sadness. I also went into it thinking it would follow the friendships between the 4 men but that wasn’t the main focus at all- the book ends up just narrowing in on the MC’s pain. YMMV, but I really did not like it.