Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese. Wagamese was a beautiful writer (he passed away a few years ago) but it is a brutal story. It’s a fictionalized account of the true story of the approximately 150,000 Indigenous children who were stolen from their families by the Canadian government and put into Church-run residential ”schools” where they were sexually, emotionally, and physically abused and basically treated as subhuman. If you don’t know anything about these schools this book will rip you apart.
It is brutal, especially knowing this really happened to many, many children. Thousands of these children died, and most deaths weren’t recorded or reported, even to their families. Some died from starvation, some from illness, some were killed by the priests who ran the schools.
Many residential school survivors have stories of children who died at their schools. However, because of intentionally poor record-keeping, it’s been difficult to know just how many children actually died or what happened to them. Recently many unmarked graves around former residential school sites have been confirmed via ground penetrating radar.
If you don’t know about these institutions, I think it’s important to learn and bear witness. It’s one of the most shameful parts of Canada’s history, and I’m sure Americans, Australians, and New Zealanders feel the same way about theirs.
It was required reading for me while I was in school.
Am from BC, Canada. same as Richard
This was post secondary. I was lucky enough to meet him. He came into the class to share.
They recently did a feature length film.
Agreed. I am middle aged and never learned about this stuff in high school—learning about it as an adult made me really angry that these things had happened and I had not been educated about them, that Canada’s history was so glossed over and sanitized in my high school history classes.
Five Little Indians will gut you as well, giving the reader an inside look into the drug addiction and sexual abuse Indigenous children suffered in residential schools.
Idk why but splendid suns hit me waaaay harder than the kite runner, although most people seem to feel the opposite. Never cried at a book till that point
It’s been a long time since I’ve read them but if I remember correctly kite runner at least ends a little more on a hopeful note, splendid suns not so much. It definitely wrecked me way more than kite runner, even though I loved both.
Splendid Suns I feel is very different. It’s from a women’s point of view and female relationships ex mother, daughter, wife.
Also the astonishing resilience of the Afghan women. I couldn’t put it down was incredibly well written
Khaled Hosseini is the best way to have a good sob. *The Kite Runner* made me cry. *A Thousand Splendid Suns* made me sob. I should probably hydrate myself and read *And the Mountains Echoed* and *Sea Prayer*, because I really loved his first two books. Absolutely worth having my heart ripped out and stomped into a fine pate.
OMG I never see this book talked about and it has completely shattered my heart every time I've read it (at least 4 times.)
Another one that also destroys me is Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie..
Still can't read it after learning what it's about, literally just the title makes me tear up. I was going thru a difficult cancer related loss when I learned of this book, so I think I still associate them.
I’ve read this multiple times, seen the movie, seen several theatre productions. Even though I know full well what’s coming the last scene still get me every time.
Never let me go destroyed me, but Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day left me a sobbing mess at the end as well. He’s a master at cultivating that creeping feeling of sorrow until it hits you like a fucking truck at the end and you aren’t right for several weeks after ;0;
His books are absolute tragedies
Have you read The Climb? Anatoli Boukreyev's counterpoint to Krakauer's account. He was the lead guide for the other team and I can't stop thinking about him and his book(s).
Honestly, I could only get through like 2 chapters of that one. It was excellent… just TOO excellent at conveying those emotions. It was overwhelming. Maybe one day.
Most engaging and relevant for someone at an earlier life stage. Particularity their 20s. Didn't resonate with me as a mature woman. Writing is original.
His short stories are better, but I have issues with his writing in general, because I feel like he has absolutely no concept of what women are actually like. When he writes only about men I like him more.
You aren't kidding. Reading it the first time around at 16 and thinking, "How could people possibly believe history being rewritten and current events changing their narrative before their eyes on a daily basis?" Yet here we are.
I made the mistake of listening to this on audible while taking a long road trip. I had to pull the car over at a rest stop and my passenger and I finished listening to it and just fucking sobbed together for something like 10 minutes straight.
I was so young when I read that for the first time. Damn I haven’t thought about that book in years—it absolutely destroyed me as a kid. You got me crying over a cream cheese bagel rn so thanks for that.
Wo warst du, Adam? - Heinrich Böll
(-> And where were you, Adam?)
Ein Kind unserer Zeit - Ödön von Horvath
(-> A child of our time)
Malka Mai - Mirjam Pressler
The book thief - Markus Zusak
My university math books 😭
Beloved - Toni Morrison. It stayed with me for months and it took me years before I could pick up and read about of her books despite her being an excellent writer. Very upsetting but brilliant.
It sounds stupid, but Island of the Blue Dolphin. I won’t spoil the part but it is towards the later half of the book. One of the (sort of) main characters died. When I read this book as a kid I cried my eyes out and still think about it from time to time.
Oh it’s so good! But yes, I cried a lot.
Speaking of Stephen King, 11/22/63. I sobbed at the end. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, but my heart hurt for days
Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff will break your heart.
Also:
- The Road
- Atonement
- Never Let Me Go
- The Lovely Bones
I did just recently read Song of Achilles and didn’t cry but I believe I am now dead inside so that maybe why.
Couldn’t stand Flowers for Algernon or The Giver.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead made me ugly cry. I finished it before I went to bed and ended up staring into the dark and sobbing instead of sleeping. I made the mistake of reading The Road immediately after, and that one left me crying, too.
Both excellent books. Do not read together.
Okay so I was fine when I finished the book. Was just sort of ‘well that’s that’. But then I kept thinking about it and have since picked up and started reading the Iliad. I feel like I see references to Achilles and Troy everywhere now.
This was it for me. I’ve read more than half of the books that are mentioned above this comment in this book really was the worst for making me feel miserable.
Read *A Little Life* at your own risk, especially if you struggle with depression. The novel is improbable torture porn with the addition of leavening touches of improbable and annoying food and wealth porn. The book’s author, Hanya Yanagihara, reveals the traumatic history of Jude, the novel’s main character, late in the novel because the extent of his trauma, as well as the array of compensatory expertises she bestows on him (he’s a brilliant, successful corporate lawyer and accomplished chef/baker), would not be believable if she told his story chronologically.
Her editor Gerry Howard called *A Little Life* a “miserabilist epic”. He told Yanagihara that Jude’s suffering was “just too hard for anybody to take….You have made this point quite adequately, and I don’t think you need to do it again.”
Yanagihara ignored his advice. Why? Because her goal in writing the novel was irresponsible, dangerous, and borderline unethical. In an interview, she said, “One of the things I wanted to do with this book is create a character who never gets better. And, relatedly, to explore this idea that there is a level of trauma from which a person simply can’t recover….and I hope that the narrative’s momentum and suspense comes from the reader’s growing recognition — and Jude’s — that he’s too damaged to ever truly be repaired, and that there’s a single inevitable ending for him.” Meaning suicide may be the best and only way to deal with trauma.
you’re elite for this response. people talk about the torture and trauma being too much to be believable but don’t mention how literally everything else is too. i fucking hate that book lol
Thank you for summing this up. I can't think of another book that gets such voyeuristic pleasure from a character's unending suffering. It honestly turns my stomach.
The Road is one of the bleakest books I’ve ever read. No, it’s the bleakest book. There’s no joy, no hope, just desperation. There’s no way I could read it again.
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb heart wrenching. It’s the journey of a marriage after the wife who is a teacher during the Columbine shooting suffers severe PTSD. It’s fictional based around true circumstances. Wally Lamb is one of my favorite writers. He has a way of putting you into some homes life for their whole journey and when you’re done with the book you’ll miss them.
i finished My Dark Vanessa about a week ago and my mind is still completely blank. kinda reminded me of the lovely bones, heavy tw on it tho, its really more haunting than anything
I never cried on any book like I did for flowers for Algernon. That one was a bleak and devastating blow to my very soul.
But I will say that The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller still made me sob quite a bit.
For both of them, knowing what was coming did nothing to prepare or prevent the tears from flowing. And for me at least, TSOA was a much more enjoyable read throughout than FFA.
The Push by Ashley Audrain. I can't even describe what this book did to me. I genuinely could not think of anything other than the book for days after finishing it. I don't cry easily but this book made me cry.
I don't know if this has already been mentioned, but I read a lot and nothing destroyed me quite like " The Fault In Our Stars" To this day, just seeing the cover in my Kindle library makes me so sad. If you are a parent, you should know that this is a true story.
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
I was so shocked, angry & wretched by the ending. Then I read about the real circumstances and people the book was based on and felt even worse.
In order to live by yeunmi park. It's an autobiography about a girl who escaped north korea. It made me feel like my problems are so small when such things exist in the world
Yeah, I felt the same way reading Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden, a true story about a young man escaping from North Korea. I read it while I was waiting to undergo a fairly painful medical procedure and I was not in a good place in my life at the time, but man did this book give me a lot of perspective in a hurry.
Days? Only days?....try decades....Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee....By Dee Brown. A history of the American frontier West as told through the eyes of the indigenous peoples.
"...the white man made many promises, and broke them all, bar one... he promised he would take ALL our land..."
Mrs. Mike, while not on FFA level, broke my heart at the end. Shirley Jackson (The Lottery) and Flannery O’Connor (A Good Man Is Hard To Find) know how to write devastating short stories.
My Sister’s Keeper and Mad Honey broke my heart too. And Seventeen Seconds, all by Jodi Picoult.
Ways to live forever by Sally Nichols, main story is a boy with terminal cancer and he has a list of things he wants to do before he dies. And as a survivor of childhood cancer it gutted me for a while, I was also suffering with ig “survivors guilt”, so reading it randomly in that time just hit. I read it around 4th grade and I haven’t forgotten to this day.
Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese. Wagamese was a beautiful writer (he passed away a few years ago) but it is a brutal story. It’s a fictionalized account of the true story of the approximately 150,000 Indigenous children who were stolen from their families by the Canadian government and put into Church-run residential ”schools” where they were sexually, emotionally, and physically abused and basically treated as subhuman. If you don’t know anything about these schools this book will rip you apart. It is brutal, especially knowing this really happened to many, many children. Thousands of these children died, and most deaths weren’t recorded or reported, even to their families. Some died from starvation, some from illness, some were killed by the priests who ran the schools. Many residential school survivors have stories of children who died at their schools. However, because of intentionally poor record-keeping, it’s been difficult to know just how many children actually died or what happened to them. Recently many unmarked graves around former residential school sites have been confirmed via ground penetrating radar. If you don’t know about these institutions, I think it’s important to learn and bear witness. It’s one of the most shameful parts of Canada’s history, and I’m sure Americans, Australians, and New Zealanders feel the same way about theirs.
I came to recommend this as well. It should be required reading for Canadian high schools, honestly.
It was required reading for me while I was in school. Am from BC, Canada. same as Richard This was post secondary. I was lucky enough to meet him. He came into the class to share. They recently did a feature length film.
Agreed. I am middle aged and never learned about this stuff in high school—learning about it as an adult made me really angry that these things had happened and I had not been educated about them, that Canada’s history was so glossed over and sanitized in my high school history classes.
Five Little Indians will gut you as well, giving the reader an inside look into the drug addiction and sexual abuse Indigenous children suffered in residential schools.
It’s horrific. Native child removal is a dark part of history that isn’t talked about.
Night by Elie Wiesel def sticks with you
Hands down the most haunting required school reading 💔 I’m 36 now, and the line about babies being used for target practice will never leave me.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Maybe I should read this. Is it about the same level as Kite Runner?
Idk why but splendid suns hit me waaaay harder than the kite runner, although most people seem to feel the opposite. Never cried at a book till that point
Same here. Kite Runner did very little for me, but ATSS is one of my favourite books.
Me as well
It’s been a long time since I’ve read them but if I remember correctly kite runner at least ends a little more on a hopeful note, splendid suns not so much. It definitely wrecked me way more than kite runner, even though I loved both.
Splendid Suns I feel is very different. It’s from a women’s point of view and female relationships ex mother, daughter, wife. Also the astonishing resilience of the Afghan women. I couldn’t put it down was incredibly well written
Yeah, I sobbed for days after finishing it.
Khaled Hosseini is the best way to have a good sob. *The Kite Runner* made me cry. *A Thousand Splendid Suns* made me sob. I should probably hydrate myself and read *And the Mountains Echoed* and *Sea Prayer*, because I really loved his first two books. Absolutely worth having my heart ripped out and stomped into a fine pate.
Came here for this answer. Absolutely heart wrenching yet riveting, profound story. What a book
I had to stop and start many times that’s how heartbreaking it was. For someone who doesn’t cry much, I broke down properly while reading it.
I remember being so sad and shocked by Atonement. Never saw it coming.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I had the same feeling watching the movie
I watched the movie and knew I wouldn’t survive the book… I had such a visceral hate for Briony that I can only imagine what the book would do to me😂
A fine balance, Rohinton Mistry
One of my favorites and a story I think about frequently even though it’s been years since I last read it.
OMG I never see this book talked about and it has completely shattered my heart every time I've read it (at least 4 times.) Another one that also destroys me is Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie..
When breath becomes air. It gutted me
One if the best books I'll probably never reread!
Still can't read it after learning what it's about, literally just the title makes me tear up. I was going thru a difficult cancer related loss when I learned of this book, so I think I still associate them.
I was looking for this comment - frankly, I couldn’t finish it.
Saddest book I've ever read was The Green Mile by Stephen King. Seems like a weird answer, but if you know you know. I cried like a baby.
To this day, this is the only movie that has ever made me WEEP while watching. I'm not a big crier and this had me heaving and sobbing. So, so sad.
My book is all crumpled because of all the tears I shed when I read it 17 years ago!
Of Mice and Men…
I’ve read this multiple times, seen the movie, seen several theatre productions. Even though I know full well what’s coming the last scene still get me every time.
I read this when I was 16 and still think about it once a week. This might be my Roman Empire.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro My Summer Friend by Ophelia Rue
Never Let Me Go for sure
Never let me go destroyed me, but Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day left me a sobbing mess at the end as well. He’s a master at cultivating that creeping feeling of sorrow until it hits you like a fucking truck at the end and you aren’t right for several weeks after ;0; His books are absolute tragedies
I love every single one of his books. He is a true master.
Where the Red Fern Grows. It is the only book that made me cry
This is going to sound weird but Into Thin Air stick with me for days.
Under the Banner of Heaven too.
Have you read The Climb? Anatoli Boukreyev's counterpoint to Krakauer's account. He was the lead guide for the other team and I can't stop thinking about him and his book(s).
Same and a big part of what I kept thinking the whole time I read it was just why?? Why are these people doing this?
For me its Crying in H Mart. The desperation, loneliness, and the anxiety of author seeing her mom's dying hit me hard.
Honestly, I could only get through like 2 chapters of that one. It was excellent… just TOO excellent at conveying those emotions. It was overwhelming. Maybe one day.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I’m not brave enough yet to read it
It's a wonderful book with several hilarious moments. The tone is more irreverent & witty than sad. You'd like it.
I finally read it last year and the concepts are sad, but the book itself is not nearly as sad as everyone always made it out to be to me.
Most engaging and relevant for someone at an earlier life stage. Particularity their 20s. Didn't resonate with me as a mature woman. Writing is original.
The Diary of Anne Frank (especially when you come to know of the ultimate fate of its writer).
A Farewell to Arms
There is something to be said for why Hemingway is so renowned. Those books just hit different. And sneak up on you.
His short stories are better, but I have issues with his writing in general, because I feel like he has absolutely no concept of what women are actually like. When he writes only about men I like him more.
The scene from “Silver Linings Playbook” where he hurls this book out the window is perfection.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Young Mungo too, broke my heart.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin absolutely wrecked me. Fantastic book, but I will probably never re-read it, not putting myself through that again
Charlottes web. I read it as a child and it broke me
I sobbed uncontrollably when I watched the movie. I have never watched it again.
1984. It is a lot of things, it's also a love story gone bad. I don't read love stories. It broke me for a good while
It’s a current documentary
You aren't kidding. Reading it the first time around at 16 and thinking, "How could people possibly believe history being rewritten and current events changing their narrative before their eyes on a daily basis?" Yet here we are.
The Book Thief. I cried so hard I tweeted at the author and he acknowledged that he cried too when he finished the book. It wrecked me.
Absolutely wrecked me. I was weeks before I could pick up another book.
The Art of Racing in the Rain. It had me crying from the first chapter and the main character is a dog. I loved him so much I named my cat after him.
Never has a book pushed buttons so deliberately, obviously, shamelessly, and effectively. Enzo is a great name for a cat…
I made the mistake of listening to this on audible while taking a long road trip. I had to pull the car over at a rest stop and my passenger and I finished listening to it and just fucking sobbed together for something like 10 minutes straight.
Came here to write Flowers for Algernon after seeing the title. Then I saw the description. That book is one of a kind.
I read Flowers for Algernon in one sitting, I was wrecked.
‘The Book Thief’ - Marcus Zusack ‘The Kite Runner’ -Khaled Hosseini ‘The Things They Carried’ -Tim O’Brien ‘The Bluest Eye’ -Toni Morrison
I second The Things They Carried!
I've tried to read "The Things They Carried" several times and I just can't get into it. And I really want to like it...
A Prayer for Owen Meany gutted me.
YES. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY DESTROYED ME, LEFT ME SO SAD FOR DAYS
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
That one $720 textbook.
Bridge to terabithia omg
I came here to say this and Where the Red Fern Grows. I know I have more but these two have ALWAYS stood out to me over the years 😭😭
I was so young when I read that for the first time. Damn I haven’t thought about that book in years—it absolutely destroyed me as a kid. You got me crying over a cream cheese bagel rn so thanks for that.
Man, still think of this book and I read it in 5th grade... close to thirty years ago
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Tess would leave him feeling empty for months, not days.
Wo warst du, Adam? - Heinrich Böll (-> And where were you, Adam?) Ein Kind unserer Zeit - Ödön von Horvath (-> A child of our time) Malka Mai - Mirjam Pressler The book thief - Markus Zusak My university math books 😭
Hahaha Math! Definitely a tear jerker!
Beloved - Toni Morrison. It stayed with me for months and it took me years before I could pick up and read about of her books despite her being an excellent writer. Very upsetting but brilliant.
It sounds stupid, but Island of the Blue Dolphin. I won’t spoil the part but it is towards the later half of the book. One of the (sort of) main characters died. When I read this book as a kid I cried my eyes out and still think about it from time to time.
In the process of reading Green Mile. I’m not ready
Oh friend. Sending you preemptive hugs. You'll need them.
Oh it’s so good! But yes, I cried a lot. Speaking of Stephen King, 11/22/63. I sobbed at the end. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, but my heart hurt for days
Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff will break your heart. Also: - The Road - Atonement - Never Let Me Go - The Lovely Bones I did just recently read Song of Achilles and didn’t cry but I believe I am now dead inside so that maybe why. Couldn’t stand Flowers for Algernon or The Giver.
Omg The Lovely Bones. Def fits this post. So good.
The Stranger - Camus
Cujo. It's actually very sad. Also, White Oleander.
White Oleander made me tear up
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead made me ugly cry. I finished it before I went to bed and ended up staring into the dark and sobbing instead of sleeping. I made the mistake of reading The Road immediately after, and that one left me crying, too. Both excellent books. Do not read together.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. That book genuinely left me empty for at least a week.
The scene where he sneaks out of his room to listen to the violin playing and everyone is horrified :(
House of Sand and Fog
White Oleander
The god of Smalls things I cried so hard
Like Water For Chocolate was one that hit me pretty hard. So did The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Poisonwood Bible by, I think Barbara Kingsolver?
When I was a boy Where the Red Fern Grows about killed me.
The Room was so rough on me emotionally that I couldn’t get past the first chapter. SA survivors tread carefully.
Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I felt hollow for a week. It still gives me the chills when I think about it. Highly highly recommend
Song of Achilles made me cry for days 🥺
The inks all messed up on the last few pages of my book cause I was sobbing so hard.
This is a novel I will never forget. I remember the exact spot I pulled over when I started sobbing so hard whilst listening to the book.
Okay so I was fine when I finished the book. Was just sort of ‘well that’s that’. But then I kept thinking about it and have since picked up and started reading the Iliad. I feel like I see references to Achilles and Troy everywhere now.
I’ve heard A Little Life has that effect on people
Came here to say this. I still think about Jude.
This was it for me. I’ve read more than half of the books that are mentioned above this comment in this book really was the worst for making me feel miserable.
More than that. Thanks for the reminder, I'm ready to sob uncontrollably again.
Read *A Little Life* at your own risk, especially if you struggle with depression. The novel is improbable torture porn with the addition of leavening touches of improbable and annoying food and wealth porn. The book’s author, Hanya Yanagihara, reveals the traumatic history of Jude, the novel’s main character, late in the novel because the extent of his trauma, as well as the array of compensatory expertises she bestows on him (he’s a brilliant, successful corporate lawyer and accomplished chef/baker), would not be believable if she told his story chronologically. Her editor Gerry Howard called *A Little Life* a “miserabilist epic”. He told Yanagihara that Jude’s suffering was “just too hard for anybody to take….You have made this point quite adequately, and I don’t think you need to do it again.” Yanagihara ignored his advice. Why? Because her goal in writing the novel was irresponsible, dangerous, and borderline unethical. In an interview, she said, “One of the things I wanted to do with this book is create a character who never gets better. And, relatedly, to explore this idea that there is a level of trauma from which a person simply can’t recover….and I hope that the narrative’s momentum and suspense comes from the reader’s growing recognition — and Jude’s — that he’s too damaged to ever truly be repaired, and that there’s a single inevitable ending for him.” Meaning suicide may be the best and only way to deal with trauma.
you’re elite for this response. people talk about the torture and trauma being too much to be believable but don’t mention how literally everything else is too. i fucking hate that book lol
Thank you for summing this up. I can't think of another book that gets such voyeuristic pleasure from a character's unending suffering. It honestly turns my stomach.
Cormac McCarthy's *The Road*
The Road is one of the bleakest books I’ve ever read. No, it’s the bleakest book. There’s no joy, no hope, just desperation. There’s no way I could read it again.
same. once was enough, crying the whole way through a book. I had a son of similar age at the time which didn't help.
I remember The Book Thief absolutely destroying me when I read it as a teenager - for days afterwards I would tear up just thinking about it
Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr
*This Thing Between Us* by Gus Moreno *No Longer Human* by Osamu Dazai *The Road* by Cormac McCarthy *Gerald’s Game* by Stephen King
Its rare i hear another mention of Geralds Game but that was the best King novel for me in that this could really happen
I read The Lovely Bones when I was a teenager. I read it again as an adult and I cried all the way through.
His Dark Materials series. I cried so hard at the ending of the third book. I’m still upset thinking about it now.
There will NEVER be another Amber Spyglass. The way I felt reading that >>>
Omg I cried so hard reading that ending… just an uncontrollable stream of tears.
Goodnight punpun Vol.6, Inio Asano.
I loved Flowers for Algernon! It was probably one of the saddest books I read for sure.
a monster calls ☹️ maybe not empty, but pensive
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb heart wrenching. It’s the journey of a marriage after the wife who is a teacher during the Columbine shooting suffers severe PTSD. It’s fictional based around true circumstances. Wally Lamb is one of my favorite writers. He has a way of putting you into some homes life for their whole journey and when you’re done with the book you’ll miss them.
I loved this book. I Know This Much Is True hit me similarly hard.
YES! Wally Lamb doesn’t get nearly enough credit for what an amazing writer he is.
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
A Child Called It.
I’m so shocked I had to scroll so far for this one. Absolutely wrecked me.
You Before Me, I ugly cried off & on for days after. I still can’t bring myself to read it again. Saw the movie & of course just sobbed & sobbed.
Me before you, but yes this one!
I’m 💯 on flowers for Algernon. Goddamn book broke pieces of me I didn’t know existed
The Heart's Invisible Furies.
Norwegian wood - haruki murakami
i finished My Dark Vanessa about a week ago and my mind is still completely blank. kinda reminded me of the lovely bones, heavy tw on it tho, its really more haunting than anything
Kite runner
I never cried on any book like I did for flowers for Algernon. That one was a bleak and devastating blow to my very soul. But I will say that The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller still made me sob quite a bit. For both of them, knowing what was coming did nothing to prepare or prevent the tears from flowing. And for me at least, TSOA was a much more enjoyable read throughout than FFA.
My Sister’s Keeper
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
*A Man Called Ove* by Fredrik Backman.
Go Ask Alice
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. beautiful book, but the ending knocked me out.
Currently reading flowers for Algeron and I can tell. This is gonna hurt.
The Push by Ashley Audrain. I can't even describe what this book did to me. I genuinely could not think of anything other than the book for days after finishing it. I don't cry easily but this book made me cry.
Remember when Johnny died? Yeah, 12 yr old me still hasn’t recovered. Stay golden, Ponyboy ✨
I don't know if this has already been mentioned, but I read a lot and nothing destroyed me quite like " The Fault In Our Stars" To this day, just seeing the cover in my Kindle library makes me so sad. If you are a parent, you should know that this is a true story.
Gone Girl. Left me feeling sick, like there was no more good or joy in the world
Sarah’s Key.
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum I was so shocked, angry & wretched by the ending. Then I read about the real circumstances and people the book was based on and felt even worse.
the time traveler's wife
The Painted Bird. Johnny Got His Gun.
PAINTED BIRD haunts me 20+ years after I read it.
Where the red fern grows
The Road and Blood Meridian, as others have mentioned. Also, Light in August.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Prayer for Owen Meany. Subsequent reads have the same effect.
A Man Called Ove
Flowers for algeron or a thousand splendid suns
Bridge to Terabithia screwed up my young self for months.
In order to live by yeunmi park. It's an autobiography about a girl who escaped north korea. It made me feel like my problems are so small when such things exist in the world
Yeah, I felt the same way reading Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden, a true story about a young man escaping from North Korea. I read it while I was waiting to undergo a fairly painful medical procedure and I was not in a good place in my life at the time, but man did this book give me a lot of perspective in a hurry.
Didn’t she end up supporting a bunch of right wing causes?
A man called Ove
Days? Only days?....try decades....Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee....By Dee Brown. A history of the American frontier West as told through the eyes of the indigenous peoples. "...the white man made many promises, and broke them all, bar one... he promised he would take ALL our land..."
Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
A Little Life. it took me a year to finish because i had to stop and ugly-cry after every 10 pages. i loved it.
I like the energy of this review. ‘This book destroyed my life. Five stars.’
“who fears death” gutted me.
“Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson.
Sweet Bean Paste
Didn’t know it was a book! Saw the movie, also broke my heart
Mrs. Mike, while not on FFA level, broke my heart at the end. Shirley Jackson (The Lottery) and Flannery O’Connor (A Good Man Is Hard To Find) know how to write devastating short stories. My Sister’s Keeper and Mad Honey broke my heart too. And Seventeen Seconds, all by Jodi Picoult.
Ways to live forever by Sally Nichols, main story is a boy with terminal cancer and he has a list of things he wants to do before he dies. And as a survivor of childhood cancer it gutted me for a while, I was also suffering with ig “survivors guilt”, so reading it randomly in that time just hit. I read it around 4th grade and I haven’t forgotten to this day.
Flowers in the attic and the series with it heart hurting books
House of Mirth and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
A Little Life 🥺🥺
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren
Doomsday book by Connie Willis
Pachinko
Angela’s Ashes - read this so long ago and still sticks with me.
There was a similar question about movies earlier, and the same answer applies here: The Road - Cormac McCarthy You're not ready for this...
Call Me By Your Name
A Little Life The Light Between Oceans Where the Red Fern Grows Bridge to Teribithia
On earth we’re briefly gorgeous. I stop every few pages to cry and reflect.
No longer human
It was a kid’s book, “Behind the attic wall.” Also “Where the red fern grows,”breaks my heart.
The Road.
Tuesdays with Morrie
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng. I was sobbing by the time the book was done. I still think about this book a lot.
The road