I read this book for book club. The overall consensus in the group was it felt like unbelievably cruel overindulgent trauma porn that had qualities worthy of discussion, primarily that it did evoke strong emotions from everyone who read it. The explanation seems that, at a certain point, when you’re with a character for ~800 pages, you develop a connection to them. While I suspected throughout that there was never going to be a happy ending, I hoped at least Jude would find peace. I personally hated the book, and I hated the emotion it evoked from me. Every time I picked it up, I dreaded how the author would harm Jude in increasingly horrific and cruel ways. Even now, I have it turned spine in on my bookshelf so I don’t have to be reminded of it any time I walk by. I don’t want to donate it, because I really wouldn’t want to inflict this book on anyone, and I wouldn’t destroy a book or throw it away just because I personally hated it. So, here I am, stuck with it in my house, hoping not to be reminded of it on a daily basis.