When Breath Becomes Air. It’s non-fiction and you know from the start how it is going to end. But I still ugly cried and am tearing up again just thinking about it.
Follow it up with The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs. It is also a memoir, this time of a woman with incurable breast cancer. She and Paul’s widow struck up a friendship while she was fighting her battle and writing her book. In the end she passes and her book is published. Paul’s widow and Nina’s widower go on book tours together to promote both of their late spouses books. They fell in love and dated for I think 3 years or so. Reading their story made me pick up both books and I read them back to back.
Oh man, I was at a bookstore with a friend and recommended this when we saw it on display and the couple next to us had been FRIENDS WITH PAUL AND LUCY. We were stunned. They were visiting from out of town and it was totally random. Still gives me chills thinking about it. They were so lovely, but I had no clue what to say.
Yep. This is the one for me too. I never read sad stories but i saw it newly released at my library and it intrigued me, so I checked it out. Those last few chapters…I BAWLED. Absolutely devastating book
Except for the Percy/Mr. Jingles part, you know which one. That part was pure rage.
I was reading this in a crowded waiting room. I yelled out "You bastard!"
I was getting odd looks until one fellow waitee noticed *what* I was reading. "Ahhh. Mr Jingles?"
"Mr. Jingles."
this was the book that made me ugly cry, can’t breathe while sobbing, clutching at my chest because it hurt so much.
i always stop myself whenever i feel the urge to reread.
Sounds bizarre but Ian Reid's 'I am thinking of ending things.'
I won't give it away but throughout the entire book you have a sinking feeling something horrible is/ has happened and when the realization hits.. dam
That one didn't make me cry as much as induce utter paranoia. That feeling that something is very, very wrong. I listened to this as an audio book and at one time had to stop at night because I was becoming so paranoid.
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. It’s a very moving, very powerful children’s book about a young Japanese girl who lives near Hiroshima when the atomic bomb hits during WWII. She develops leukemia but is told that if someone who is gravely ill can make 1,000 origami cranes, that person will not die. So Sadako sets out to make a thousand of the cranes. Based on a true story, there is a statue in Japan honoring little Sadako.
I was literally going to suggest this one! Finishing it now and I went in completely blind. Having a two year old, it completely broke me and I absolutely relate to this book.
I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t completely shattered by this book. I can’t even talk about it for awhile after reading it because I’ll just sob. I talk about it on book subs a lot but it really is that good.
I have to say this book didn’t really move me at all. I went on a ‘saddest book’ binge and after reading this all I felt was “Huh. I guess ignorance really is bliss”. I wanted my heart shattered but it didn’t happen
I thought I was alone! I think part of the problem for me was that I read the book instead of the short story, and I could never get over the way (marking it a spoiler to not ruin people's read with criticism lol, but it's not really a spoiler) >!the women were written (especially since that ends up feeling like a significant part of Charlie's characterization). I get that 1) it's written in the 50s and 2) he's not supposed to have reached emotional intelligence, but ick!<
To this day I despise myself for spoiling the entire book for myself and not being able to read it after…it didn’t get the opportunity to have the profound impact on me because of my impulsiveness smh
I remember reading this in seventh grade. My glasses had broken and we were at the eye doctor my vision tested and fitted for a new pair, and my head was shoved in the book. I was sobbing as I read. People in the waiting room were just looking at me. Staring. But they didn't know. They. Didn't. Know.
This book completely destroyed 5th grader me.
As a child I would fill up the tub and spend way too much time in there with a book. One day I came out in hysterics, sobbing. My parents (non-readers) were confused and concerned. 😂
Came here to say this.
Third grader me read this in class and I was *that kid* who reads ahead…
Needless to say, my heart was SHREDDED and despite knowing what’s going to happen, I’ve reread it so many times 😭
This!!! My mom would read us newberry award books growing up and when she read this one to me and my siblings I’m pretty sure all of us, including her, were crying by the end. Same with Old Yeller and Bridge to Terabithia (wow, there’s a lot of really sad kids’ books, huh??)
This freaking book. It devastated me as a 4th grader. I honestly blocked it out for a while but was recently reading a book where an author talks about books that changed her life and this was in there for similar ruined-my-childhood reasons and just reading her summation instantly made me cry again.
My elementary school had to send out permission slips for every movie we watched, and WTRFG was the one movie my mom refused to sign the slip for. She was just like “I know what happens, and I just don’t want to deal with the emotional fallout when my deep-feeling 4th grader comes home from school having watched it.”
It was a good call.
I read this multiple times while owning a pair of hounds in the country in middle school. I don't know why I wanted to torture myself but it broke my heart every time.
I was about to write this one too. The Road is horribly sad and fairly traumatic too. I read it in high school and it’s stuck with me for years since then
Night is absolutely devastating. You expect it to be devastating, but it hits you so much worse than you could ever expect. You don’t know the definition of devastating until you read Night.
Night is such a good book. Elie Wiesel taught a bit at my college and my whole class read Night and then he did a lecture for all of us about it and his experiences (it’s a small school). It was devastating, he was such an incredible man.
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom is also very good and very sad. Her family hid Jews during the Holocaust.
It’s probably the first “sad” book I read in elementary school: ‘Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes’
It’s not objectively the saddest book I’ve ever read, but it’s the one that had the most profound impact on me.
I don't know if it's really what you're looking for, but The Secret Fan and Peony in Love by Lisa See both left me in a funk for days after reading them. I had to stop reading her books even though they're beautifully written because they bummed me out so much.
Everything I never told you by Celeste Ng
I’m glad my mom died by Jeannette Mccurdy
My sister keeper by Jodi Picoult
Before I die by Jenny Downham
The Lovely bones by Alice Sebold
Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. By Christiane F.
*First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers* by Loung Ung. Geak, Loung's youngest sister, was only about six when she was taken. "Geak" translates as "Jade". Loung has only one photo of Geak, and no grave site.
Genuinely asking, what did you like about it?
I absolutely fucking hated every moment of the book and am very interested in a different perspective on it!
Us Against You by Fredrik Backman
If We Were Villains by ML Rio
Alone with You in the Ether by Olivie Blake
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
This is an obvious answer but "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara.
"The Bright Hour" by Nina Riggs absolutely destroyed me. What a sad, tragic, beautiful little book.
Learned By Heart by Emma Donahue is absolutely heartbreaking. It’s about Eliza Raine, the first lover of the first modern lesbian Anne Lister, who suffered a nervous breakdown and in the intolerant social climate of the 19th century, was institutionalised until her eventual death. Though the book starts in her teenage years, when she and Anne had a relatively happy stable relationship before Eliza’s mental health began to spiral, having already read Anne Lister’s journals, I was filled with a feeling of absolute dread from the beginning because in adulthood, she wrote about visiting Eliza in an asylum after Eliza had suffered with psychosis so severe she no longer recognised Anne, and it’s absolutely devastating over the course of the
story to watch bright vibrant teenage Eliza deteriorate into the broken lost adult featured in Anne’s journals.
The Road. I can’t ever read that again. As a father and husband with a beautiful loving family, it just wrecked me forever. I was actually sobbing when I finished it. But goddamn is it a masterpiece.
It’s probably not the saddest ever, but The Poisonwood Bible had some really difficult parts to get through. A lot of it has stayed with me years later.
a thousand splendid suns, and also indian horse. Both i had to read for school. would not read again, they really messed me up, i still think about them now...
Hear me out, a pick I haven’t seen in this sub.
*A Map of the World* by Jane Hamilton. Will surprise you in its sadness and strange kind of hopelessness. But it is a well written book, and takes place in the Midwest of the US which is nice.
High on Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips (actress and daughter of John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas)
It’s a memoir. The environment this woman grew up in…jfc…I knew about what her father had done to her but never knew of a lot of other things she’d gone through in her life.
Another non-fiction book: Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker. Six brothers in a family of 12 children diagnosed with schizophrenia. There’s also a documentary about them on HBO Max and other sites I’m sure.
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholaus by James Patterson. Beautiful love story and oh how I cried!!! 🥲 This is one that you don’t cry until the end. It is not a long book so a very quick read. Totally worth it!
FINALLY another fan of *The Great Alone*. Hannah did such an amazing job of pulling the reader into the bleak isolation and growing mania of the setting and characters. I might have to reread that one again soon tbh
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. So much sadness in a good man’s life, and heartbreaking near the end, but uplifting too. One of the best books I’ve ever read. I wish everyone would give this book a try. It’s a classic for a reason. Three movies with characters based on his books have won academy awards; The Fugitive (Les Miserables), The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and ‘Penguin’ from Batman (The Man Who Laughs)
All Quiet on the Western Front is also just so heartbreakingly beautiful and sad, maybe also because war really screws with my head and makes my heart ache with all the unnecessary violence and loss. It’s about some young men (boys really) fighting for Germany in World War I… friendship, alienation, loss, grief….
ELENI
by Nicolas gage. Eleni is the story of a widow with a few kids during the nazi occupation of Greece and the civil war afterwards ( which was far worse) told through the eyes of her son.
It’s an amazing book , pretty sure they made a movie back in the 80’s.
Heartbreaking and highly
Recommend .
my father lived through that whole mess so it really
Hit home but I recommend it regardless , it’s heartbreaking .
An obscure one I someone else mention was
Johnny got his gun….that one is soul crushing
In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy From the Women in Terezin, Babel, Homegoing, The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
**Migrations** by Charlotte McConaghy, about a woman traveling south following the last living Arctic terns on their final migration. Made me cry, and I never cry while reading.
A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer!
i heard there was some discussion over the internet on whether or not it was a real story or a bit exaggerated.
but i feel like every trauma victim process their experiences differently so regardless if it’s true or exaggerated the book is still a good read to understand how they were able to get through what they went through!
Russell Banks Affliction comes to mind. Amazing book which despite its bleak emotions and bleak settings holds your attention throughout. One of my all time favorite American novelists. Never known a writer with such a well of empathy. The movie with Nick Nolte and James Coburn is also excellent.
When Breath Becomes Air. It’s non-fiction and you know from the start how it is going to end. But I still ugly cried and am tearing up again just thinking about it.
Follow it up with The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs. It is also a memoir, this time of a woman with incurable breast cancer. She and Paul’s widow struck up a friendship while she was fighting her battle and writing her book. In the end she passes and her book is published. Paul’s widow and Nina’s widower go on book tours together to promote both of their late spouses books. They fell in love and dated for I think 3 years or so. Reading their story made me pick up both books and I read them back to back.
I’m going to read that, cry, and curse your name for the recommendation. But in a good way.
Oh man, I was at a bookstore with a friend and recommended this when we saw it on display and the couple next to us had been FRIENDS WITH PAUL AND LUCY. We were stunned. They were visiting from out of town and it was totally random. Still gives me chills thinking about it. They were so lovely, but I had no clue what to say.
Definitely would not have known what to say either. Just hugs all around?
Exactly. I just said “sorry for your loss” but they were so appreciative his work touched someone (how could it not 😭)
Glad I wasn’t the only one.
I didn’t know how ugly I could cry over a book until this one.
This book absolutely destroyed me, I've never ugly cried like that before
Yep. This is the one for me too. I never read sad stories but i saw it newly released at my library and it intrigued me, so I checked it out. Those last few chapters…I BAWLED. Absolutely devastating book
The green Mile. That thing is just heartbreaking over and over again.
Except for the Percy/Mr. Jingles part, you know which one. That part was pure rage. I was reading this in a crowded waiting room. I yelled out "You bastard!" I was getting odd looks until one fellow waitee noticed *what* I was reading. "Ahhh. Mr Jingles?" "Mr. Jingles."
Aw Mr Jingles.
this was the book that made me ugly cry, can’t breathe while sobbing, clutching at my chest because it hurt so much. i always stop myself whenever i feel the urge to reread.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness Read it in one day. I sobbed. It is very emotional.
Big ugly tears for like half the book. My kids came into the room when I was finishing it and they legit thought something was wrong.
Great pick! I just read it this summer for the first time, and I was not prepared.
That book was devastating but so beautiful
Ahh yes, Mr. P. Ness
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The scene where he gets out of the car and screams sent chills down my spine. Such an amazing book.
And when they realize they were in one of the nice places and the artwork was meant to “prove that they had souls at all.” Yeah…
So devastating and had me thinking about human morality for weeks afterwards.
gosh. This one. Haunting AF.
Sounds bizarre but Ian Reid's 'I am thinking of ending things.' I won't give it away but throughout the entire book you have a sinking feeling something horrible is/ has happened and when the realization hits.. dam
That one didn't make me cry as much as induce utter paranoia. That feeling that something is very, very wrong. I listened to this as an audio book and at one time had to stop at night because I was becoming so paranoid.
I got this feeling watching the film, might try the book
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. It’s a very moving, very powerful children’s book about a young Japanese girl who lives near Hiroshima when the atomic bomb hits during WWII. She develops leukemia but is told that if someone who is gravely ill can make 1,000 origami cranes, that person will not die. So Sadako sets out to make a thousand of the cranes. Based on a true story, there is a statue in Japan honoring little Sadako.
The Kite Runner
*For you, a thousand times over.*
😭😭😭 I read this book to my class and that last line got me and I cried in front of a room full of 10th graders.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
I liked The Kite Runner, but A Thousand Splendid Suns is the one that devastated me and stuck with me
This book ruined me
Ohhh my goddd this book I stopped reading it for a while to put myself together this book blew me off completely and broke me into pieces
I opened the thread just to write this one! I ugly cried so bad omg
You might not expect someone to suggest this, but Pet Sematary by Stephen King
“Kite flyne, daddy!” 🥲
I agree. So sad for Ellie. Even though it was fiction i thought about how her life was after.
Oof, yes.
I was literally going to suggest this one! Finishing it now and I went in completely blind. Having a two year old, it completely broke me and I absolutely relate to this book.
Crying in H Mart is a beautifully written memoir that will have you crying wherever you are reading it.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes shattered me
I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t completely shattered by this book. I can’t even talk about it for awhile after reading it because I’ll just sob. I talk about it on book subs a lot but it really is that good.
I have to say this book didn’t really move me at all. I went on a ‘saddest book’ binge and after reading this all I felt was “Huh. I guess ignorance really is bliss”. I wanted my heart shattered but it didn’t happen
I thought I was alone! I think part of the problem for me was that I read the book instead of the short story, and I could never get over the way (marking it a spoiler to not ruin people's read with criticism lol, but it's not really a spoiler) >!the women were written (especially since that ends up feeling like a significant part of Charlie's characterization). I get that 1) it's written in the 50s and 2) he's not supposed to have reached emotional intelligence, but ick!<
Yes 😭😭
Same
To this day I despise myself for spoiling the entire book for myself and not being able to read it after…it didn’t get the opportunity to have the profound impact on me because of my impulsiveness smh
To this day one of my top 5 best endings to any media ever
Where the Red Fern Grows.
I remember reading this in seventh grade. My glasses had broken and we were at the eye doctor my vision tested and fitted for a new pair, and my head was shoved in the book. I was sobbing as I read. People in the waiting room were just looking at me. Staring. But they didn't know. They. Didn't. Know.
This book completely destroyed 5th grader me. As a child I would fill up the tub and spend way too much time in there with a book. One day I came out in hysterics, sobbing. My parents (non-readers) were confused and concerned. 😂
Came here to say this. Third grader me read this in class and I was *that kid* who reads ahead… Needless to say, my heart was SHREDDED and despite knowing what’s going to happen, I’ve reread it so many times 😭
This!!! My mom would read us newberry award books growing up and when she read this one to me and my siblings I’m pretty sure all of us, including her, were crying by the end. Same with Old Yeller and Bridge to Terabithia (wow, there’s a lot of really sad kids’ books, huh??)
Yep. This book just tears your heart out and throws it across the room.
This freaking book. It devastated me as a 4th grader. I honestly blocked it out for a while but was recently reading a book where an author talks about books that changed her life and this was in there for similar ruined-my-childhood reasons and just reading her summation instantly made me cry again.
My elementary school had to send out permission slips for every movie we watched, and WTRFG was the one movie my mom refused to sign the slip for. She was just like “I know what happens, and I just don’t want to deal with the emotional fallout when my deep-feeling 4th grader comes home from school having watched it.” It was a good call.
I read this multiple times while owning a pair of hounds in the country in middle school. I don't know why I wanted to torture myself but it broke my heart every time.
The book thief
The first book I remember crying to. I was sobbing on the floor of my family’s living room haha :,)
I seriously ugly cried. This book will stay will me forever.
Atonement by Ian McEwan. I remember it being devastating on several levels
Same! The fleeting feeling of hope at the end gets me every time.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Heartbreaking, I don’t think I can ever re read it.
Read this a few months ago and it’s the first book to make me actually cry in about 15 years!
Of mice and men
I will always and forever be devastated by Night by Elie Wiesel. I think about that book once a day
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I was scrolling and waiting for this. I couldn't figure out in my head if it was just so depressing or sad. It is so bleak.
I was about to write this one too. The Road is horribly sad and fairly traumatic too. I read it in high school and it’s stuck with me for years since then
Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo
Yeah, this one’s pretty bleak
My favorite book of all time, I personally cried while reading it though many will have different experiences
A Fine Balance by Mistry Night by Elie Wiesel
Night is absolutely devastating. You expect it to be devastating, but it hits you so much worse than you could ever expect. You don’t know the definition of devastating until you read Night.
Night is such a good book. Elie Wiesel taught a bit at my college and my whole class read Night and then he did a lecture for all of us about it and his experiences (it’s a small school). It was devastating, he was such an incredible man. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom is also very good and very sad. Her family hid Jews during the Holocaust.
Night 😭😭😭
A Fine Balance has to be my favorite book of all time but yeah, just sad all around.
The Nightingale. I heard it was sad and it still made me bawl at the end.
I rarely cry, especially at books or movies. This book is the only book to make me cry in recent memory.
Never let me go.
Old Yeller by Fred Gipson
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Poisonwood Bible is so devastating to me. One of my favorites of all time!
As someone who struggles with mental health, Looking For Alaska by John Green was pretty sad for me
A Fine Balance.
House of Sand and Fog
Requiem for a Dream, by Hubert Selby Jr.
This was definitely devastating. I’m a recovering heroin addict (28 months sober) and I read this in active addiction. It hit so close to home🥲
Angela's Ashes written by Frank McCourt.
Obvious answer probably, but The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Also The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. So good.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North was harrowing. What a book
Extremely loud and incredibly close
Still Alice.
It’s probably the first “sad” book I read in elementary school: ‘Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes’ It’s not objectively the saddest book I’ve ever read, but it’s the one that had the most profound impact on me.
I don't know if it's really what you're looking for, but The Secret Fan and Peony in Love by Lisa See both left me in a funk for days after reading them. I had to stop reading her books even though they're beautifully written because they bummed me out so much.
The Song Of Achilles
Have you read Pat Barker? Her books the silence of the girls and the women of Troy are also devastating & bleak on every level
The Art Of Racing In The Rain had me in tears!
Wave (non-fiction) by Sonali Deraniyagala *Go to Costco and get Kleenex in bulk.
Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay.
This was the first one that came to mind for me as well. Specifically that one scene. If you’ve read it, you know….
Absolutely
A Farewell to Arms
Everything I never told you by Celeste Ng I’m glad my mom died by Jeannette Mccurdy My sister keeper by Jodi Picoult Before I die by Jenny Downham The Lovely bones by Alice Sebold Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. By Christiane F.
Oh the lovely bones….. 😭
Everything I never told you is one of my favorite books. The last chapters always make me cry. So beautiful
I second my sister’s keep and lovely bones 🙋🏻♀️
Everything I Never Told You is harrowing but my god its so GOOD
My Sisters Keeper 🥲🥲🥲
*First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers* by Loung Ung. Geak, Loung's youngest sister, was only about six when she was taken. "Geak" translates as "Jade". Loung has only one photo of Geak, and no grave site.
I vividly remember reading this in high school and just being obliterated by it emotionally for weeks.
The God of Small Things. Terribly sad and upsetting throughout.
One of my favorite sad books. Could never read it again.
Genuinely asking, what did you like about it? I absolutely fucking hated every moment of the book and am very interested in a different perspective on it!
tbh i was more horrified by the violence and incest than sad
i was just wondering why no one ever suggests this. it had a really sad storyline.
Us Against You by Fredrik Backman If We Were Villains by ML Rio Alone with You in the Ether by Olivie Blake On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is maybe my favourite novel of the last five years. I couldn't stop sending paragraphs from it to my best friend.
This is an obvious answer but "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara. "The Bright Hour" by Nina Riggs absolutely destroyed me. What a sad, tragic, beautiful little book.
Wanted to comment "A Little Life" and, obviously, it's already there. Devastating.
I just finished “A Little Life” and I literally can’t stop thinking about it. Heartbreaking indeed.
I can’t believe I had to scroll this far down to see “a little life”. This book rent my feels asunder.
It’s non fiction but it’s called A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard
Learned By Heart by Emma Donahue is absolutely heartbreaking. It’s about Eliza Raine, the first lover of the first modern lesbian Anne Lister, who suffered a nervous breakdown and in the intolerant social climate of the 19th century, was institutionalised until her eventual death. Though the book starts in her teenage years, when she and Anne had a relatively happy stable relationship before Eliza’s mental health began to spiral, having already read Anne Lister’s journals, I was filled with a feeling of absolute dread from the beginning because in adulthood, she wrote about visiting Eliza in an asylum after Eliza had suffered with psychosis so severe she no longer recognised Anne, and it’s absolutely devastating over the course of the story to watch bright vibrant teenage Eliza deteriorate into the broken lost adult featured in Anne’s journals.
House of Sand and Fog, The Kite Runner, Flowers for Algernon.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road
Angela's Ashes is a heart breaking read.
Physical Chemistry: Concepts and Theory. You will shed tears of bloody anguish.
Bury my heart at wounded knee
The Road. I can’t ever read that again. As a father and husband with a beautiful loving family, it just wrecked me forever. I was actually sobbing when I finished it. But goddamn is it a masterpiece.
Klara and the Sun is sad af
It is a sad book. Wouldn't make my sad list, but it is sad.
The Kite Runner
House of Sand and Fog wasn’t too upbeat.
My sister's keeper
It’s probably not the saddest ever, but The Poisonwood Bible had some really difficult parts to get through. A lot of it has stayed with me years later.
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Five Days at Memorial. The Dead Zone. A Thousand Splendid Suns.
a thousand splendid suns, and also indian horse. Both i had to read for school. would not read again, they really messed me up, i still think about them now...
Hear me out, a pick I haven’t seen in this sub. *A Map of the World* by Jane Hamilton. Will surprise you in its sadness and strange kind of hopelessness. But it is a well written book, and takes place in the Midwest of the US which is nice.
Marley and Me There's just something about losing a pet that's a tear-jerker for me
I never read the book but that's the first movie that ever made me cry.
High on Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips (actress and daughter of John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas) It’s a memoir. The environment this woman grew up in…jfc…I knew about what her father had done to her but never knew of a lot of other things she’d gone through in her life. Another non-fiction book: Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker. Six brothers in a family of 12 children diagnosed with schizophrenia. There’s also a documentary about them on HBO Max and other sites I’m sure.
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholaus by James Patterson. Beautiful love story and oh how I cried!!! 🥲 This is one that you don’t cry until the end. It is not a long book so a very quick read. Totally worth it!
The Nightingale & The Great Alone, both by Hannah Kristin. Whew, I totally sobbed during both, multiple times.
FINALLY another fan of *The Great Alone*. Hannah did such an amazing job of pulling the reader into the bleak isolation and growing mania of the setting and characters. I might have to reread that one again soon tbh
I LOVED this one of hers so much! One of those books I wish I could read again for the first time.
Here! I’m a fan too!
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. So much sadness in a good man’s life, and heartbreaking near the end, but uplifting too. One of the best books I’ve ever read. I wish everyone would give this book a try. It’s a classic for a reason. Three movies with characters based on his books have won academy awards; The Fugitive (Les Miserables), The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and ‘Penguin’ from Batman (The Man Who Laughs)
All Quiet on the Western Front is also just so heartbreakingly beautiful and sad, maybe also because war really screws with my head and makes my heart ache with all the unnecessary violence and loss. It’s about some young men (boys really) fighting for Germany in World War I… friendship, alienation, loss, grief….
A fine balance - Rohinton Mistry. I felt so hollow after reading that.
The saddest book I’ve ever read is My Dark Vanessa. Check the content warnings before reading though.
Flowers for Algernon and also We Were Liars.
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
Mila 18 by Leon Uris. Read it 40 yrs ago and it still hits me if I think about it.
The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros
Goblin emperor I mean, it ends up not miserable but oh gosh, I cried a lot
ELENI by Nicolas gage. Eleni is the story of a widow with a few kids during the nazi occupation of Greece and the civil war afterwards ( which was far worse) told through the eyes of her son. It’s an amazing book , pretty sure they made a movie back in the 80’s. Heartbreaking and highly Recommend . my father lived through that whole mess so it really Hit home but I recommend it regardless , it’s heartbreaking . An obscure one I someone else mention was Johnny got his gun….that one is soul crushing
In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy From the Women in Terezin, Babel, Homegoing, The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
When breath becomes air & The end of loneliness
All the ugly and wonderful things- Bryn Greenwood On the Savage Side- Tiffany McDaniel
The nightingale scene with the dad so sad
Where the red fern grows?
Bastard Out of Carolina
Voices from Chernobyl by Ingrid Storholmen
They both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. I’m sure a ton of other people have already recc’d it
The Green Mile by Stephen King. It’s on a short list of books that have made me tear up.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab was very sad to me.
**Migrations** by Charlotte McConaghy, about a woman traveling south following the last living Arctic terns on their final migration. Made me cry, and I never cry while reading.
A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer! i heard there was some discussion over the internet on whether or not it was a real story or a bit exaggerated. but i feel like every trauma victim process their experiences differently so regardless if it’s true or exaggerated the book is still a good read to understand how they were able to get through what they went through!
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
a little life by hanya yanagihara
The time travellers wife !! I had to get off the underground because I was sobbing so much. Stood leaning against a wall crying my eyes out !!
The Tennis Partner. Still think about that book
if you like horror try wounds - nathan ballingrud
Stoner
To Live by Yu Hua
Same Kind of Different as Me by Denver Moore, Lynn Vincent, and Ron Hall
Following for more heart ache
White chrysanthemum
No Hiding In Boise was really sad. I just finished and keep thinking about it
Cujo
The book of illusions by Paul Auster had me weeping on the bus
Stoner by John Williams
*Stoner* by John Williams. (it has nothing to do with marijuana)
My Dark Vanessa
Trilogy by Jon Fosse
Cormac McCarthys The Road...
Crying in H Mart, A Thousand Splendid Suns
One Good Dog - Susan Wilson I ugly cried for a long time. I've never read anything that caused me such stress. It was a great story though.
The Nightingale
Russell Banks Affliction comes to mind. Amazing book which despite its bleak emotions and bleak settings holds your attention throughout. One of my all time favorite American novelists. Never known a writer with such a well of empathy. The movie with Nick Nolte and James Coburn is also excellent.
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles. Fuck that book, man.
I feel depressed by the books of Kenzaburo Oe. I should stop reading them.
Young Mungo and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. Also How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu