I felt very much the same for quite a lot of the parts I have so far read. Bits of it I really liked, because they spoke to me — Little Dog's first queer experiences, for example — but a lot of it felt really uncomfortably misery-porn without feeling I was learning a huge amount from it (except a bit more context of wartime Vietnam). And it was also pretty strange reading something that felt like it was autobiographical but also a roman à clef, y'know? Interesting and bits of it are great — and Ocean Vuong is clearly an exceptional writer — but I DNF'd about halfway through.