I have so many conflicting thoughts about this book, so I'm just listing good vs. bad.

The good:
- the characters are easy to love and connect with, especially Willem, Harold, and Julia
- the majority of this book was interesting and easy to follow
- the writing is so beautiful. There are many valuable lessons and incredible quotes to get from this story. Some of my favorites are:
      • “He experienced the
      singular pleasure of
      watching people he loved
      fall in love with other people
      he loved.”
      • “But what was happiness
      but an extravagance, an
      impossible state to
      maintain, partly because it
      was so difficult to
      articulate?”
       • “Fairness is for happy
       people, for people who have
       been lucky enough to have
       lived a life defined more by
       certainties than by
       ambiguities.
       Right and wrong, however,
       are for—well, not unhappy
       people, maybe, but scarred
       people; scared people.”

The bad:
- much of the trauma that Jude experienced borders on misery porn
- the traumatic events began to be repetitive, and made the middle of the book drag
- at times it felt like the author dreamt up the most horrific shit that could ever happen to a person and threw it in the book

- there are multiple detailed pages of a child being groomed and sexually abused

- I would not feel comfortable recommending this to someone

Overall, I don't regret reading this. There were certainly good parts about it and things I will take away from it. But I could've done without most of the explicit things that happened to Jude. We could've understood that Jude was clearly mentally/physically ill without all of that.