The People in the Trees

Precise rating 3.5 ⭐️

The whole book feels like setup for the very last scene, which makes it all seem pointless. I'm also sure that was intentional by Yanagihara. Perina wrote his memoires to defend himself, so one could think he wrote all that setup to deflect from what ultimately happened. Or to get the reader on his side—which would've been a pretty lousy attempt anyway since Perina seemed unlikeable from the start. Yanagihara did manage to shock me with the ending, though. And, knowing her other two books, I feel like she knew exactly what she was doing at every point in the story, and from that perspective I really appreciate it.In the end, this book didn't even come close to A Little Life and To Paradise (apart from the writing, which was very beautiful as usual), but that has mostly to do with my personal preferences and not the obejctive quality of the book (as far as I can judge the latter anyway