I don't really know how I should start this review. I know that this book left a huge impact on a lot of people. I know that others absolutely loathed it. Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle, thus my 2.5-rating. I'm going to be very honest: I never connected to any of the characters. I found this book incredibly easy to read. Sure there was a lot of suffering and pain, but it didn't faze me at all. I didn't cry whilst reading this, and only felt uneasy once (and that wasn't even during an intense scene). 
 The reason why I wasn't wrecked by this story was simply that I didn't believe it. Literature stands and falls with its authenticity. If the characters and what happens to them doesn't feel real to you, you won't feel for them. You're not going to be in a headspace in which their suffering becomes yours. I assume that people who loved this book didn't have a problem connecting with the characters. And I can see why. I can easily see readers getting involved with Jude, his friends, his past, the things he's trying to forget... It just didn't happen for me. In my opinion, the pain and suffering was exaggerated in such a way that it became absurd, sometimes even ridiculous (especially the Caleb- and Dr. Traylor-episodes). 
 However, I am convinced that it was willfully exaggerated. There was not one point at which I had the feeling that Hanya wasn't in control of her story, that she didn't know what she was doing. No, not all. Personally, I think that Hanya is a very gifted and considerate writer. A lot of my feelings and questions and frustrations and possible solutions were echoed by her and discussed on the page, but then she simply chose to gown down another path, to tell another story. And that is perfectly fine. That is her good right, and I don't hold a grudge (except maybe for Malcolm. He was the most interesting character to me and I would've loved a deeper insight into his racial identity. Out of the four of them, he's the one who deserved better... not in terms of what happened to him in the end, but in terms of how little Hanya cared to develop him further.) 
 I also have to praise Hanya's writing style. I flew through her story in a mere five days, and that was only possible, because her sentences were easily readable. The syntactical structures and words she chose were very much straight-forward and clear, and I highly appreciate that. 
 In spite of that, I found myself lost a couple of times during her narrative. The one thing she didn't manage to encapsulate with her writing style, was the progression of time, and thus the age of her characters. Throughout the whole book, they all felt like 20-year-olds to me, even though, by the end they were all well over fifty. All of their thoughts felt the same, the way they talked was the same - it seemed unrealistic to me. Additionally, the characters seemed to live in a bubble, outside of worldy events. It was incredibly hard for me to pinpoint the time period in which this story is suppose to be set. The characters have smartphones, they use the internet, gay marriages are mentioned - and still, it felt like they were stuck in the early 2000s??? 
 Another criticism that I have is that none of the major characters felt real to me. And Jude least of all. And I'm not even speaking about his past (which was implausible), but the fact that he was perfect at fucking everything. He's a top-notch litigator. He plays the piano. He bakes the most wonderful cookies and cakes. He cooks. He speaks English, German and French. He has a beautiful singing voice. And this list goes on and on. All of this made Jude seem sooo unrealistic to me, and therefore, as mentioned above, I just couldn't feel for him. I couldn't take his character seriously. It also left a bad taste in my mouth, that this somehow diminished the message that everyone, no matter how ordinary, is deserving of love, friendship, saftey and happiness. 
 I was so prepared for this book to hit me like a fire truck. Child abuse is not something that I can take lightly. When I read Lolita earlier this month, everything felt so real and raw, that I actually had to put the book down a couple of times. I felt like I literally had to puke, if I would've continued reading. I felt like vomiting my lunch all over the pages. Lolita and Humbert felt like real people to me, which made the story so utterly terrifying. I had to go weeks without continuing the story, because I had to mentally brace myself. A Little Life, sadly, didn't achieve that for me. I felt nothing, and kept turning the pages. 
 Sure, I was frustrated whilst reading this. Most of the time at Andy (because IMO he didn't fulfill his duties as a doctor), and later on, at the notion that a healthy relationship has to revolve around sex. Honestly, that episode during The Happy Years made me just really, really angry. Maybe it was due to the fact that sex means nothing to me, but I honestly didn't understand why the person Jude was with at the time (I won't spoil you guys!) was so obsessed with the notion that they had to have sex, and kept forcing himself on Jude, even though he knew that Jude wasn't enjoying it, that Jude had been sexually abused as a child, and that he acutally started cutting himself again because of the sex. I would've understood it, if this had been one of Hanya's attempts at showcasing an abusive relationship, but it wasn't. As a reader we were suppose to root for this character, because he was the only one whom Jude really trusted, and the only one who never betrayed his trust. 
 But here again, I can't really blame Hanya for this. It is perfectly clear to me that this isn't lazy writing, this was a conscious decision that Hanya made (because the character reflects on these exact things as well). But just as it is Hanya's right to write what she wants, it is my right to dislike what I want. But of course, this doesn't diminish her ability as a writer. 
 Overall, I have to say that I am grateful that I've read this. No, it didn't leave an impact on me, and the characters won't stay with me for a long time, but it still was a good book. I can highly appreciate how planned this novel was - I loved that I had the feeling that Hanya was so much in control of this world she'd created. It's not a world that I believe in, but it's a world nonetheless. And that in itself is something that only few writers achieve(d).