A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

When four graduates from a small college in Massachusetts move to New York to find their path, they are quickly faced with the first hardships of adult life. They are broke, disillusioned, and the only thing keeping them together is loyal friendship and mutual support.

So, we have kind and handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a sharp-witted and sometimes ruthless artist from Brooklyn trying to break into the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect; and the reserved, enigmatic Jude.

Over the course of decades, their relationships deepen and darken, shaped by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge is Jude himself — a remarkably gifted lawyer in adulthood, but a profoundly broken man, his mind and body marked by unspeakable scars from childhood, haunted by the thing he fears the most.