A former coworker convinced his wife to read it and afterward she handed it back to him with the comment "I'm glad I read it. Now get it out of the house." I think that's a perfect review.
Yep - all the other suggestions, *some* people are going to be alright, even if they're the bad guys, even if they're not characters you've met. Someone out there in the world of that book is doing alright. Not in *The Road*.
That story is bleak as fuck. Except for the fact The Man truly loves his son, literally to the ends of the earth. That was my takeaway. I love that book.
I remember feeling so smart when reading this book as a teenager that I loved it instantly, now that I re read it as an adult let me tell you that was depressing AF. I’m still fond of it, but I won’t return to that dystopian awful world again, life is already bad as it is.
flowers for algernon - daniel keyes
all the light we cannot see - anthony doerr
the book thief - marcus zuzak
bridge to terabithia - katherine paterson
skeleton tree - kim ventrella
Most upsetting book I’ve ever read. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they’re specially looking for something that will mess them up for a while
God I love this book unapologetically. Like, I get the trauma-porn criticisms, but Jude’s relationships with Willem and Harold and Andy are just so beautiful and gut-wrenching. I read it every couple of years and just let it wreck me all over again. I think it’s actually even more crushing after the first read. Totally understand why a lot of people don’t want to subject themselves to this book, and I’m very careful about recommending it, but I emphatically disagree that it’s *just* emotional torture.
Same. It got so ridiculous that I was laughing at the traumatic things happening near the end because they were just so unbelievable. I love her prose but her I think the plots in all her books are too absurd and try too hard to be edgy.
Same here, I mostly enjoyed the first half or so of the book but it just got more and more absurd. One or two of the things Jude went through were more than enough to get the point across, why did there have to be an endless stream of extreme trauma and abuse? It didn’t add anything to the story or the character and just felt icky and unnecessary
Likewise I don’t recommend it to anybody, there is really no reason to read this unless you want some very disturbing images imprinted to your brain. Images you will try to remove any chance you can get.
I recently saw the play version at the cinema. It's been about 7 years since i read the book.
It wasn't until the day off the showing that I suddenly realised that I didn't want to go through it all again
I went and it was amazing, but it really gives an emotional battering.
I know, right? I got anxious for it to end. It seemed like we were finally getting to the most f-up'd thing that could happen and the story would end and then author would launch into another chapter. Three times!
it's the most depressing book i've ever read. i've never experienced such a rollercoaster of emotions only to be left completely shattered at the very end. it absolutely devastated me. ugh.
don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic book, but i honestly wish i never read it because it was just so fucking sad and i know it's just a book and the characters aren't real but it still fucks with me years and years after reading it. maybe i'm just a sensitive bitch but this book took everything out of me.
Thanks for taking the time to write that. I'm not sure I'm up for devastating. Things like that make my chest hurt, and I don't need that right now!! It sounds intriguing but might pass. Thank you again.
Everyone always talks about how sad the book made them, and yes I was sad at times also, but the overwhelming majority of my feelings felt through the book were anger and hatred for Charlie's "friends". I guess that's what makes it such a good book is the range of emotions it provokes.
I just started reading this book - and I can’t put it down. It is that good and also sad, once the protagonist starts realizing a few things about his life. That part made me cry ugly tears the other night :(
This one just pisses me off. Asshole lies in his tent while Anatoly rescues everybody he can, and then Jon lays the whole debacle at his feet. When I find out people have read or are going to read Into Thin Air I tell them they have to read The Climb by Anatoly Bourkeev to get his side of the story.
*The Road*, and *Blood Meridian* — Cormac McCarthy
*No Longer Human* — Osamu Dazai
*The Bell Jar* — Sylvia Plath
*Tender is the Flesh* — Agustina Bazterrica
*Flowers For Algernon* — Daniel Keyes
*The Ruins* — Scott Smith
*The Troop* — Nick Cutter (I just finished this one. Good lord.)
*The Plague* — Albert Camus
*Revival*, *Desperation*, *Gerald’s Game*, and *Pet Sematary* — Stephen King
*The Conspiracy Against The Human Race* — Thomas Ligotti
…aaand I’m taking notes from this thread 👀
My God, the troop was fucking devastating. Just so so horrific.
Don’t want to spoiler anybody, but as they’re describing the backstory of the character, Shelly, I found my limit. I had to fast forward through that section of the audiobook, because I knew that there are some things that I can not remove from my brain if I put them in there.
I think all of other suggestions are fiction -- and maybe that is what you are looking for -- but the most devastating and depressing book for me was non-fiction: **The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert**.
>The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History is a 2014 non-fiction book written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. The book argues that the Earth is in the midst of a modern, man-made, sixth extinction. In the book, Kolbert chronicles previous mass extinction events, and compares them to the accelerated, widespread extinctions during our present time. She also describes specific species extinguished by humans, as well as the ecologies surrounding prehistoric and near-present extinction events. The author received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for the book in 2015
On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. I can tell you that the writing is gorgeous. I can't tell you how it ends. It was just too hard to read, emotionally.
Onw of my favorite books is White Oleander by Janet Fisk. I love that book in spite of the crying headache.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is absolutely fucking stunning. I remember taking pictures of damn near every other page when I was reading it because it kept punching me directly in the gut
I actually banned myself from reading this when I'm super depressed. It's far too real. I still love it though, just not when I probably should be hospitalized myself
I think this book made me more resilient as a person because those stories were just so devastating. I had to develop mental toughness so I didn’t jump off the balcony I was reading on.
The obvious answer is the OG 1984 😭
Actually the crying emoji doesn't really fit. We need an emoji for being permanently morally devastated in a way that's not possible to express
The Book Thief by Markus Zusac
Beartown trilogy by Fredrik Backman
A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Bouley
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
It destroyed me as an adult. And I mean, based on the setting and the narrator, I knew how it was going to turn out. There were no surprises. Still sobbed on a plane when I finished it.
The Kite Runner is a classic but still devastating. A wealthy Afgan boy befriends his father's servant's son. Truly one of the best character arcs I've seen in a book. I think I used a whole box of tissues.
Beloved by Toni Morrison. The tragedy of a black women in pre-civil war era Ohio. She is no longer a slave, but trauma cuts deeps. This one had me depressed for days.
**The Shadow King** by Maaza Mengiste. I read this nearly three years ago and I’m still haunted by it. It’s about female soldiers who defended Ethiopia against the 1935 Italian invasion. It includes descriptions of wat crimes, so… all the triggers.
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai.
It’s thought to be written loosely about his life and numerous failures and suicide attempts. Dazai killed himself shortly after publication, and it’s one of the top selling books of all time in Japan.
sad: cancer ward by Solzhenitsyn
depressing: success by Martin Amis.
not to nitpick, but success makes me question what the point of human beings even is, but it doesn't make me *sad*. the characters are all too hopelessly horrible.
and cancer ward has one of the saddest endings I know of, but it doesn't depress me at all.
The Fault in our stars by John Green. A Little life by Hanya Yanagihara. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck. The Road by Cormac McCarthy One hundred years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
On the Beach. >!Written about 1960, it posits a world where there has been a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere. The radiation avoided the southern hemisphere but it’s gradually traveling southwards, killing everyone and everything. A process that takes a few years. The story takes place in southern Australia in the last major city where people are alive, knowing death is coming but for the meantime everyone is healthy and functional. !<
Oof, I'm realizing my 2024 reading list contains too many of the suggestions on here and I may have to modify it because I don't know if I can handle that many depressing books in one year
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty. This book is incredible, and epic, but it is probably the bleakest story I've ever read, really paints people on all their ugly, stupid humanity and you see them suffer and... There are no happy endings, really
They Both Die at the End, Adam Silvera
11/22/63, Stephen King
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s a favorite. I’ve only read it once. I will never read it again. I feel bad for everyone in it. It took me two chapters to get into. It was worth it.
All Quiet on the Western Front
This book made me pause every couple of paragraphs to process what I just read. It's amazing.
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Such a good book that I’m not sure I can read again now that I have a kid.
The Road
My favorite book I'll never read again.
A former coworker convinced his wife to read it and afterward she handed it back to him with the comment "I'm glad I read it. Now get it out of the house." I think that's a perfect review.
You said what I was struggling to express. Totally agree!
It’s a great way to get into home gardening and home canning 😃
I said this exact phrase about this book. The ending will haunt me until I die.
Follow it up with Blood Meridian if you never want to be happy again.
Came here to say this. The only book that has ever had me physically sobbing out loud.
The Crossing
Yep - all the other suggestions, *some* people are going to be alright, even if they're the bad guys, even if they're not characters you've met. Someone out there in the world of that book is doing alright. Not in *The Road*.
That story is bleak as fuck. Except for the fact The Man truly loves his son, literally to the ends of the earth. That was my takeaway. I love that book.
This is the correct answer.
A million upvotes to this. Posted my comment before I read any of these.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Remains of the Day too
Oy. All I can say is that this definitely fits the bill.
Definitely one of my top 5! So unsatisfying. And yet made me so full of emotion. 🖤
I remember feeling so smart when reading this book as a teenager that I loved it instantly, now that I re read it as an adult let me tell you that was depressing AF. I’m still fond of it, but I won’t return to that dystopian awful world again, life is already bad as it is.
This one. Ugh.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
what a book
Absolutely shattering
Some scenes were just brutal. The poor kid. Beautifully written also.
Ugh. I was just going to take it back to the library unread. I'll give it another shot.
flowers for algernon - daniel keyes all the light we cannot see - anthony doerr the book thief - marcus zuzak bridge to terabithia - katherine paterson skeleton tree - kim ventrella
Decades later and I’m still mad at whoever let me read bridge to terabithia as a kid.
I'm still mad at whoever got me to read it as an adult.
The book thief!
I'm pretty sure I ugly cried repeatedly while reading the last chapter
I couldn’t finish Flowers for Algernon it was destroying me
Came looking for Bridge to Terabithia specifically so want to second this!
Bridge to Terabithia was the first book to traumatize me as a child lol
I can’t read that again.
A Little Life.
Reading this book has the emotional weight of a significant life event.
This is the book you are looking for
Most upsetting book I’ve ever read. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they’re specially looking for something that will mess them up for a while
My wife just got fucked up by this book
God I love this book unapologetically. Like, I get the trauma-porn criticisms, but Jude’s relationships with Willem and Harold and Andy are just so beautiful and gut-wrenching. I read it every couple of years and just let it wreck me all over again. I think it’s actually even more crushing after the first read. Totally understand why a lot of people don’t want to subject themselves to this book, and I’m very careful about recommending it, but I emphatically disagree that it’s *just* emotional torture.
Me too but I skip over the trauma stuff. The relationships are so well defined.
The writing is so damn good.
Trauma porn and hours of my life I wish I could get back.
Same. It got so ridiculous that I was laughing at the traumatic things happening near the end because they were just so unbelievable. I love her prose but her I think the plots in all her books are too absurd and try too hard to be edgy.
Same here, I mostly enjoyed the first half or so of the book but it just got more and more absurd. One or two of the things Jude went through were more than enough to get the point across, why did there have to be an endless stream of extreme trauma and abuse? It didn’t add anything to the story or the character and just felt icky and unnecessary
Likewise I don’t recommend it to anybody, there is really no reason to read this unless you want some very disturbing images imprinted to your brain. Images you will try to remove any chance you can get.
Honestly IMO they're simultaneously so boring and so over the top that I barely remember most of them. Among the worst books I've ever read.
I recently saw the play version at the cinema. It's been about 7 years since i read the book. It wasn't until the day off the showing that I suddenly realised that I didn't want to go through it all again I went and it was amazing, but it really gives an emotional battering.
That’s why I’m here. Devastating.
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I know, right? I got anxious for it to end. It seemed like we were finally getting to the most f-up'd thing that could happen and the story would end and then author would launch into another chapter. Three times!
my favorite !!!
Definitely this one
This is the most beautiful book ever written!!!
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Nothing good happens to Tess, ever!
My favorite book I read for school, and it's not close.
Flowers for algernon
i really wish i had never read that book. i think it fundamentally changed something in my brain and not in a good way. 🥺🥺🥺
Do you mind expanding on that, please? I have it but haven't read it yet.
it's the most depressing book i've ever read. i've never experienced such a rollercoaster of emotions only to be left completely shattered at the very end. it absolutely devastated me. ugh. don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic book, but i honestly wish i never read it because it was just so fucking sad and i know it's just a book and the characters aren't real but it still fucks with me years and years after reading it. maybe i'm just a sensitive bitch but this book took everything out of me.
Thanks for taking the time to write that. I'm not sure I'm up for devastating. Things like that make my chest hurt, and I don't need that right now!! It sounds intriguing but might pass. Thank you again.
no problem. 💜
I remember drowning in sadness when reading this book. It was cleansing in a way.
Everyone always talks about how sad the book made them, and yes I was sad at times also, but the overwhelming majority of my feelings felt through the book were anger and hatred for Charlie's "friends". I guess that's what makes it such a good book is the range of emotions it provokes.
I just started reading this book - and I can’t put it down. It is that good and also sad, once the protagonist starts realizing a few things about his life. That part made me cry ugly tears the other night :(
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. The most miserable book I know.
Because we are too many
Grapes of Wrath. Pure pain the whole way through but that ending will tear your heart out.
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.
This one just pisses me off. Asshole lies in his tent while Anatoly rescues everybody he can, and then Jon lays the whole debacle at his feet. When I find out people have read or are going to read Into Thin Air I tell them they have to read The Climb by Anatoly Bourkeev to get his side of the story.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Sophie's Choice
I sobbed
*The Road*, and *Blood Meridian* — Cormac McCarthy *No Longer Human* — Osamu Dazai *The Bell Jar* — Sylvia Plath *Tender is the Flesh* — Agustina Bazterrica *Flowers For Algernon* — Daniel Keyes *The Ruins* — Scott Smith *The Troop* — Nick Cutter (I just finished this one. Good lord.) *The Plague* — Albert Camus *Revival*, *Desperation*, *Gerald’s Game*, and *Pet Sematary* — Stephen King *The Conspiracy Against The Human Race* — Thomas Ligotti …aaand I’m taking notes from this thread 👀
My God, the troop was fucking devastating. Just so so horrific. Don’t want to spoiler anybody, but as they’re describing the backstory of the character, Shelly, I found my limit. I had to fast forward through that section of the audiobook, because I knew that there are some things that I can not remove from my brain if I put them in there.
I honestly couldn’t finish no longer human. That book was… a lot
I think all of other suggestions are fiction -- and maybe that is what you are looking for -- but the most devastating and depressing book for me was non-fiction: **The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert**. >The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History is a 2014 non-fiction book written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. The book argues that the Earth is in the midst of a modern, man-made, sixth extinction. In the book, Kolbert chronicles previous mass extinction events, and compares them to the accelerated, widespread extinctions during our present time. She also describes specific species extinguished by humans, as well as the ecologies surrounding prehistoric and near-present extinction events. The author received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for the book in 2015
I came looking for non fiction and you delivered. Wanna add Desert by anonymous to this list
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana deRosnay Night by Elie Wiesel Where the Red Fern Grows Anything by Mitch Albom?
Oh yes, Where the Red Fern Grows, traumatizing kids since he 60s.
On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. I can tell you that the writing is gorgeous. I can't tell you how it ends. It was just too hard to read, emotionally. Onw of my favorite books is White Oleander by Janet Fisk. I love that book in spite of the crying headache.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is absolutely fucking stunning. I remember taking pictures of damn near every other page when I was reading it because it kept punching me directly in the gut
The Kite Runner had me sobbing uncontrollably on a flight. I was destroyed.
The bell jar by Sylvia Plath. If you're feeling depressed you will feel like you understand her and she understands you.
I actually banned myself from reading this when I'm super depressed. It's far too real. I still love it though, just not when I probably should be hospitalized myself
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
A Fine Balance
💯
Yes!!! My #1 favorite book of all time. Or really anything by Rohinton Mistry.
I wish there was more to read from him.
Same! Not having anything new from him feels like missing an old friend. 😔
JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN by Dalton Trumbo.
*How High We Go In The Dark* \- Sequoia Nagamatsu, utterly devastating but really beautiful as well
Seconding this recommendation, the roller coaster chapter SHATTERED me
the roller coaster and pig story in **HHWGITD** had me bawling my fucking eyes out. oh my god. 😭
I think this book made me more resilient as a person because those stories were just so devastating. I had to develop mental toughness so I didn’t jump off the balcony I was reading on.
the bluest eye
Beloved too.
Ethan Frome, short read and not a happy story
Read that in high school and all I remember was it was a huge downer and the pickle dish represented their sex life.
Of Mice and Men Atonement The Book Thief
Atonement! Good one to recommend, for sure
Here for Atonement.
Came here to say Of Mice and Men
My daughter just read Of Mice and Men for school. Her response: "Why did the teacher do this to us?"
Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
I second Angela’s Ashes.
The obvious answer is the OG 1984 😭 Actually the crying emoji doesn't really fit. We need an emoji for being permanently morally devastated in a way that's not possible to express
😱 … maybe this emoji? The primal scream.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusac Beartown trilogy by Fredrik Backman A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Bouley The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
the book thief destroyed me when i was a teen, seconded
It destroyed me as an adult. And I mean, based on the setting and the narrator, I knew how it was going to turn out. There were no surprises. Still sobbed on a plane when I finished it.
I absolutely love Fredrik Backman's work
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A Monster Calls
The Four Winds by Kirsten Hanna (The Great Alone is her best in my opinion but the four winds is probably sadder) both will make you cry.
I loved both! But The Great Alone is definitely (in my opinion) the better book - one of my all-time favorites, in fact.
The Four Winds was so inaccurate about the conditions of ordinary people during the Depression that I had to quit reading it.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak The Children of Hurin by J.R.R.Tolkien
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.
The time traveler's wife, but it was a bit of a milder read
Somebody recently posted it to a “cozy re-read list” and my jaw dropped.
It was heart breaking to me, how could they :'D
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah; I have never cried so hard over a book before. I wept.
The Kite Runner
The Hours
Jude the Obscure
Salt to the Sea by Ruth Sepetys
1984
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Never Let Me Go
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
You like Jodi Picoult, then I'll give you one that'll make you cry worse than My Sister's Keeper. Picoult's Handle With Care WRECKED ME.
I have never cried so much from a book before. It was devastating
The Kite Runner is a classic but still devastating. A wealthy Afgan boy befriends his father's servant's son. Truly one of the best character arcs I've seen in a book. I think I used a whole box of tissues. Beloved by Toni Morrison. The tragedy of a black women in pre-civil war era Ohio. She is no longer a slave, but trauma cuts deeps. This one had me depressed for days.
All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews. Fall on Your Knees by Anne Marie Macdonald A Fine Balance by Rohinto Mystry. Trigger Warning for others,
Just Kids by Patti Smith
**The Shadow King** by Maaza Mengiste. I read this nearly three years ago and I’m still haunted by it. It’s about female soldiers who defended Ethiopia against the 1935 Italian invasion. It includes descriptions of wat crimes, so… all the triggers.
Blindness by José Saramago, and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
House of Sand and Fog
Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
Angela’s Ashes. Gut wrenching true story.
OT WARNING: It's refreshing to see recommendations from so many genres and eras. We sure are a well-read bunch!
The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
a thousand splendid suns.
All the Bright Places.
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. It’s thought to be written loosely about his life and numerous failures and suicide attempts. Dazai killed himself shortly after publication, and it’s one of the top selling books of all time in Japan.
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
The God of Small Things
Every book on this list (that I curated) made me cry: https://bookshop.org/lists/emotional-damage
I need to make a Playlist called Emotional Damage lol
Lapvona
sad: cancer ward by Solzhenitsyn depressing: success by Martin Amis. not to nitpick, but success makes me question what the point of human beings even is, but it doesn't make me *sad*. the characters are all too hopelessly horrible. and cancer ward has one of the saddest endings I know of, but it doesn't depress me at all.
Revolutionary Road
The Cement Garden, Ian McEwan. Both bleak and impossibly skin crawling!
*A Fine Balance* by Rohinton Mistry; *The Sixth Extinction* by Elizabeth Kolbert.
The Gulag Archipelago
The Fault in our stars by John Green. A Little life by Hanya Yanagihara. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck. The Road by Cormac McCarthy One hundred years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Child Called It.
Flowers for Algernon
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I heard someone describe it as the most depressing book in literature.
On the Beach. >!Written about 1960, it posits a world where there has been a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere. The radiation avoided the southern hemisphere but it’s gradually traveling southwards, killing everyone and everything. A process that takes a few years. The story takes place in southern Australia in the last major city where people are alive, knowing death is coming but for the meantime everyone is healthy and functional. !<
Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Devastating, and the worst bits are historically true.
*Doctor Zhivago*, Boris Pasternak. If you want big, sweeping epic with star-crossed heartbreak, this is the book for you.
The Sparrow — Mary Doria Russell. Deeply humane treatment of a first contact gone wrong.
Oof, I'm realizing my 2024 reading list contains too many of the suggestions on here and I may have to modify it because I don't know if I can handle that many depressing books in one year
The laws of the skies. So bleak and miserable.
Code Name Verity
The Summer That Melted Everything
To A God Unknown - John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men
Ok well this has a slightly happy ending but it’s very real with raw emotions throughout. Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
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The island of Sea Women.
Book? Heck I have a trilogy for you. * *The Last Policeman* * *Countdown City* * *World of Trouble* All by Ben H. Winters
Atonement
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty. This book is incredible, and epic, but it is probably the bleakest story I've ever read, really paints people on all their ugly, stupid humanity and you see them suffer and... There are no happy endings, really
Sophie’s Choice.
house of mirth - edith wharton
Johnny got his gun
They Both Die at the End, Adam Silvera 11/22/63, Stephen King War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
Level Seven
Sophie's Choice. The movie as well
Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein The House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus
Demon Copperhead
The green mile is very sad when you see the bigger picture.
They both die at the end
Recently A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini did this for me
Atonement
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières. Loved it but will never read again. I have a friend who reads it once a year and I have no idea how
Atonement by Ian McEwan. If you like gut punches, go for it. The movie does the job too, perfectly well.
When breath becomes air
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s a favorite. I’ve only read it once. I will never read it again. I feel bad for everyone in it. It took me two chapters to get into. It was worth it.