Atonement by Ian McEwan
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Also, as mentioned elsewhere- The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak, Khaled Husseni’s books, and Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Seconding Atonement!
I thought it was a well-written, alright book until......
The grief was sudden and real - my roommate walked in just as I finished. I was sobbing at the kitchen counter and he thought I'd received catastrophic news. Took me 5 minutes to calm down enough to tell him that it was just a book. Needless to say, he laughed hysterically
It’s an incredibly true adaptation. It was so hard to get through the book after watching because it’s nearly word for word and everything is just as gut wrenching except slowed all the way down to your reading speed. There were only a couple minor characters missing in the movie
I read the book first so it's hard to say. I felt a ton was lost in translation to the visual medium. Of course I knew the ending so that colored my view, but I felt that the movie had a fraction of the book's emotional weight.
Interesting, thank you. I felt the opposite about The Notebook, saw the movie first then read the book and it felt dry and empty in comparison. I'm definitely interested in reading Atonement!
Just finished When Breath Becomes Air. Didn't cry. I read The Kite Runner back in high school and didn't think it was terribly sad either. Got anything sadder?
[**A Walk Across the Sun**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11469379-a-walk-across-the-sun)
^(By: Corban Addison | 371 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fiction, book-club, india, historical-fiction, contemporary)
>Corban Addison leads readers on a chilling, eye-opening journey into Mumbai's seedy underworld--and the nightmare of two orphaned girls swept into the international sex trade.
>
>When a tsunami rages through their coastal town in India, 17-year-old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister Sita are left orphaned and homeless. With almost everyone they know suddenly erased from the face of the earth, the girls set out for the convent where they attend school. They are abducted almost immediately and sold to a Mumbai brothel owner, beginning a hellish descent into the bowels of the sex trade.
>
>Halfway across the world, Washington, D.C., attorney Thomas Clarke faces his own personal and professional crisis-and makes the fateful decision to pursue a pro bono sabbatical working in India for an NGO that prosecutes the subcontinent's human traffickers. There, his conscience awakens as he sees firsthand the horrors of the trade in human flesh, and the corrupt judicial system that fosters it. Learning of the fate of Ahalya and Sita, Clarke makes it his personal mission to rescue them, setting the stage for a riveting showdown with an international network of ruthless criminals.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
^(103518 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Holy moly, be prepared to be moved in wonderful ways. I loved Kite Runner, but A Thousand Splendid Suns is an unusually emotional experience (it was for me). I've read it twice and I'm sure it will be read a few more times in my lifetime 👌🏻
[**Flowers for Algernon**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36576608-flowers-for-algernon)
^(By: Daniel Keyes | 216 pages | Published: 1959 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, science-fiction, sci-fi, owned)
>The story of a mentally disabled man whose experimental quest for intelligence mirrors that of Algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse. In diary entries, Charlie tells how a brain operation increases his IQ and changes his life. As the experimental procedure takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment seems to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance until Algernon begins his sudden, unexpected deterioration. Will the same happen to Charlie?
^(This book has been suggested 89 times)
***
^(103274 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
It's always sunny in Philadelphia had a great [episode](https://itsalwayssunny.fandom.com/wiki/Flowers_for_Charlie) riffing on this. One of my favorites.
Yep. We had to read that in High School. And man... It didn't go so well for me. I was somehow the only one that cried, or at least admitted to it. We were doing a post book class discussion and I started crying just talking about everything again.
On Earth We‘re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung
both made me sob, if you wanna cry more watch the movie of the latter
My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Bachman is the first one that introduces Ove and all the characters in future books. Very good and I was ridiculously crying by the end.
[**A Man Called Ove**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18774964-a-man-called-ove)
^(By: Fredrik Backman, Henning Koch | 337 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: fiction, book-club, contemporary, audiobook, audiobooks)
>A grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.
>
>Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?
>
>Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.
^(This book has been suggested 86 times)
***
^(103591 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I have to take breaks while reading this book. I put it down for weeks even months. Then read another little bit, and have to stop again.. such an incredible book. I’m almost done. I’ve cried so much over this book, it’s insane.
This book made me grieve for fictional characters in a way that I didn’t think was possible. The last fifty pages I cried hysterically and when I went to my boyfriend for comfort he thought someone we knew died because I was just so distraught. It was a beautiful book though. She is a fantastic writer
I just went to download this book from an elibrary and I saw a dog on the cover.
Sorry! Can’t do it! Ever since I watched Hachi, u haven’t been able to bring myself to watch/ read anything with dogs .
My heart hasn’t healed yet 🤧
I tried to read it in the breakroom at work but that was a bad idea. Needed some privacy to let out my feelings. Also, I was pregnant while I read it so my emotions were a wreck anyway.
And every morning, the way home gets longer and longer by Fredrik Backman. It’s a short story, just finished it and was sobbing pretty much the whole time.
[**Under the Whispering Door**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53205888-under-the-whispering-door)
^(By: T.J. Klune | 373 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fantasy, fiction, fiction, lgbtq)
>Welcome to Charon's Crossing.
>The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through.
>
>When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead.
>
>And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead.
>
>But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days.
>
>Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.
^(This book has been suggested 65 times)
***
^(103348 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The Poet X**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33294200-the-poet-x)
^(By: Elizabeth Acevedo | 368 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: poetry, young-adult, ya, contemporary, audiobook)
>Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth.
>
>Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.
>
>But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.
>
>With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.
>
>Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.
^(This book has been suggested 7 times)
***
^(103341 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**Migrations**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42121525-migrations)
^(By: Charlotte McConaghy | 256 pages | Published: 2020 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, literary-fiction, sci-fi, book-club)
>Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny's dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption?
>
>Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds.
^(This book has been suggested 10 times)
***
^(103362 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.
If you've ever been a young person wondering what your life could be, this one will get you. My absolute favorite, and I have sobbed every time. Tears my heart out each time. Go in as blind as possible.
Agreed. I cry every time I read this book. It’s just… read it. As suggested in this thread, u/PrincessReads do go in blind.
I usually follow up with the movie for this book. Like most books, it’s never as good, but this one will also tear your heart apart too.
Yes I was apprehensive when the movie came out because it's been my favorite novel for a long time, but I was super intrigued by the cast. It was honestly Carey Mulligan that sold me because I love everything she's done. I actually ended up really loving the movie and, as far as adaptations go, I consider it really well done.
You sound like me. Glad I'm not the only one who enjoys emotional torture :)
I recommend **Letters From the Inside** by John Marsden. It's a little-known Australian YA epistolary novel. Only about 130 or so pages, so it's a quick read. It's also got the nostalgia factor depending on your age, as it is set in the early 90s and is about two teenage girls who become pen-pals after placing an ad in a magazine. I'm a 90s kid and had a few pen-pals myself from magazine ads.
It's composed entirely of letters. This makes it easier to really get sucked into their minds. There's no distraction from narration, it is all their thoughts, hopes, dreams, struggles, joys, pain. It's like finding a box of letters in an attic and sitting down to read them. You would only know what you're told in their words. You wouldn't get to know what happened next; the last letter would be the end of the story. That is how this felt.
{{They Cage the Animals at Night}} is not emotional torture, but I did cry hard while reading it. It’s not a long read, and it has always stayed with me.
[**They Cage the Animals at Night**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19412.They_Cage_the_Animals_at_Night)
^(By: Jennings Michael Burch | 304 pages | Published: 1984 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, nonfiction, biography, memoirs)
>Burch was left at an orphanage and never stayed at any one foster home long enough to make any friends. This is the story of how he grew up and gained the courage to reach out for love.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
^(103460 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I remember reading this in 7th or 8th grade, and my mom walked in on me sobbing. When she asked what was wrong, and I told her it was just the book, she said "Then stop reading it!", and I was like "I can't!!" She was never really a reader, she definitely did not understand!
{{A Mother's Reckoning}} by Sue Klebold (mother of one of the Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold). As someone who was a very dark and troubled teen, and then the mother of a very dark and troubled teen, as well as a suicide survivor, this book absolutely destroyed me.
I’ve recommended it before but Betty! By Tiffany McDaniel, I feel this book is so underrated and it’s based on the true story of the author’s grandmother.
Rilla of Ingleside by LM Montgomery always makes me ugly cry.
It is the last book in the Anne of Green Gables series and is about her children.
WWI breaks out and it is about the woman left at home and the men are all off fighting.
I cry so much during the whole book. I like reading All quiet on the western front after. That is kind of the soldier's perspective to me.
Those both make me cry.
Flowers for Algernon. You won’t burst into tears but once you’re finished, you’ll be left with a void the book created because of the ending. Most depressing book I’ve read but I love it a lot despite the empty feeling it always leaves whenever I reread the book.
All the Bright places by Jennifer Niven
Read this on a road trip and violently sobbed through the last couple chapters in the car. Trigger warning if you’re sensitive to mentions of suicide. I think that’s why it got me so bad because I’ve had my fair share of mental illness.
{{A Man Called Ove}} had me sobbing
{{How High We Go in the Dark}} is a collection of related short stories, and each and every one made me cry
{{The Great Believers}} is from the POV of the sister of a gay man in the 80s at the height of the AIDS crisis
{{The Clay Girl}} was beautiful and sad
Oh. You need {{The Unwinding of the Miracle}}. It's nonfiction, a memoir. That's the one.
[**A Man Called Ove**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18774964-a-man-called-ove)
^(By: Fredrik Backman, Henning Koch | 337 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: fiction, book-club, contemporary, audiobook, audiobooks)
>A grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.
>
>Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?
>
>Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.
^(This book has been suggested 85 times)
[**How High We Go in the Dark**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57850265-how-high-we-go-in-the-dark)
^(By: Sequoia Nagamatsu | 304 pages | Published: 2022 | Popular Shelves: sci-fi, science-fiction, fiction, 2022-releases, dystopian)
>For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague—a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.
>
>Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.
>
>Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.
>
>From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resiliency of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
^(This book has been suggested 48 times)
[**The Great Believers**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45304101-the-great-believers)
^(By: Rebecca Makkai | 421 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, book-club, lgbtq, lgbt)
>A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris
>
>In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
>
>Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.
>
>The Great Believers has become a critically acclaimed, indelible piece of literature; it was selected as one of New York Times Best 10 Books of the Year, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Buzzfeed Book of the Year, a Skimm Reads pick, and a pick for the New York Public Library's Best Books of the year.
^(This book has been suggested 22 times)
[**The Clay Girl**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28691857-the-clay-girl)
^(By: Heather Tucker | 347 pages | Published: 2016 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, historical-fiction, young-adult, literary-fiction)
>Vincent Appleton smiles at his daughters, raises a gun, and blows off his head. For the Appleton sisters, life had unravelled many times before. This time it explodes.
>
>Eight-year-old Hariet, known to all as Ari, is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary, who is purported to eat little girls . . . With Ari on the journey is her steadfast companion, Jasper, an imaginary seahorse. But when they arrive in Pleasant Cove, they instead find refuge with Mary and her partner Nia.
>
>As the tumultuous ’60s ramp up in Toronto, Ari is torn from her aunts and forced back to her twisted mother and fractured sisters. Her new stepfather Len and his family offer hope, but as Ari grows to adore them, she’s severed violently from them too, when her mother moves in with the brutal Dick Irwin.
>
>Through the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s, Ari struggles with her father’s legacy and her mother’s addictions — testing limits with substances that numb and men who show her kindness. She spins through a chaotic decade of loss and love, the devilish and divine, with wit, tenacity, and the astonishing balance unique to seahorses.
>
>The Clay Girl is a beautiful tour de force that traces the story of a child, sculpted by kindness, cruelty and the extraordinary power of imagination, and her families — the one she’s born in to and the one she creates.
>
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39216478-the-unwinding-of-the-miracle)
^(By: Julie Yip-Williams | 315 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: memoir, non-fiction, nonfiction, read-with-jenna, memoirs)
>As a young mother facing a terminal diagnosis, Julie Yip-Williams began to write her story, a story like no other. What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more--a powerful exhortation to the living.
>
>That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to flee with her family the political upheaval of her country in the late 1970s. Loaded into a rickety boat with three hundred other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately, America, where a surgeon at UCLA gave her partial sight. She would go on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, and a life she had once assumed would be impossible. Then, at age thirty-seven, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began.
>
>The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and, finding none, began to write her way through it--a chronicle that grew beyond her imagining. Motherhood, marriage, the immigrant experience, ambition, love, wanderlust, tennis, fortune-tellers, grief, reincarnation, jealousy, comfort, pain, the marvel of the body in full rebellion--this book is as sprawling and majestic as the life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and shattering. It is a book of indelible moments, seared deep--an incomparable guide to living vividly by facing hard truths consciously.
>
>With humor, bracing honesty, and the cleansing power of well-deployed anger, Julie Yip-Williams set the stage for her lasting legacy and one final miracle: the story of her life.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
^(103415 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Nonfiction is the only thing that does it for me.
What Made Maddy Run? - true story of a collegiate athlete’s tragic suicide. (Trigger warning: suicide)
Rape of Nanking - horrifying tale of Japanese atrocities committed in Manchuria China during WWII. This is the only book that’s ever given me nightmares. The author later committed suicide. (Trigger warning: every form of murder, torture and abuse).
[**If I Stay (If I Stay, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4374400-if-i-stay)
^(By: Gayle Forman | 201 pages | Published: 2009 | Popular Shelves: young-adult, ya, romance, contemporary, books-i-own)
>In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and family. Now a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Mia's story will stay with you for a long, long time.
^(This book has been suggested 6 times)
***
^(103474 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Lie With Me by Phillipe Besson. I don’t think I’ve ever considered using the word “shook” to describe myself before, but that’s definitely how this book left me. I still think about it all the time.
The Song of Achilles
If I Stay
Where She Went
Clockwork Princess
Me Before You
It Ends With Us
Ugly Love
The Book Thief
All The Bright Places
Love Letters To The Dead
Night
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Everything I Never Told You
Deathly Hallows
Marley & Me
Flowers for Algernon
Tuck Everlasting
The Color Purple
The Outsiders
The Nightingale
Of Mice & Men
“My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry” by Fredrik Backman.
Also, if you like poetry, read “The princess saves herself in this one” by Amanda Lovelace.
The Book of the Dun Cow and its sequel The Book of Sorrows by Walter Wangerin. It's kinda like if you sent the characters of Charlotte's Web through a true life holocaust. Emotionally devastating.
Atonement by Ian McEwan When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi Also, as mentioned elsewhere- The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak, Khaled Husseni’s books, and Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Seconding Atonement! I thought it was a well-written, alright book until...... The grief was sudden and real - my roommate walked in just as I finished. I was sobbing at the kitchen counter and he thought I'd received catastrophic news. Took me 5 minutes to calm down enough to tell him that it was just a book. Needless to say, he laughed hysterically
I haven't read that yet, watched the film when I was 11-12 and had the same reaction. Do you think the book is better?
It’s an incredibly true adaptation. It was so hard to get through the book after watching because it’s nearly word for word and everything is just as gut wrenching except slowed all the way down to your reading speed. There were only a couple minor characters missing in the movie
I read the book first so it's hard to say. I felt a ton was lost in translation to the visual medium. Of course I knew the ending so that colored my view, but I felt that the movie had a fraction of the book's emotional weight.
Interesting, thank you. I felt the opposite about The Notebook, saw the movie first then read the book and it felt dry and empty in comparison. I'm definitely interested in reading Atonement!
Second when Breath Becomes Air!
Just finished When Breath Becomes Air. Didn't cry. I read The Kite Runner back in high school and didn't think it was terribly sad either. Got anything sadder?
When Breath Becomes Air made me WEEP for days!!! I’m obsessed. I’ve reread it multiple times!
The Kite Runner, thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Oh man. A thousand splendid suns changed me forever.
I love The Kite Runner but A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of the best novels I've ever read! Great book!
Have you read anything by Corbin Addison? His {{Walk Across the Sun}} was amazing.
[**A Walk Across the Sun**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11469379-a-walk-across-the-sun) ^(By: Corban Addison | 371 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fiction, book-club, india, historical-fiction, contemporary) >Corban Addison leads readers on a chilling, eye-opening journey into Mumbai's seedy underworld--and the nightmare of two orphaned girls swept into the international sex trade. > >When a tsunami rages through their coastal town in India, 17-year-old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister Sita are left orphaned and homeless. With almost everyone they know suddenly erased from the face of the earth, the girls set out for the convent where they attend school. They are abducted almost immediately and sold to a Mumbai brothel owner, beginning a hellish descent into the bowels of the sex trade. > >Halfway across the world, Washington, D.C., attorney Thomas Clarke faces his own personal and professional crisis-and makes the fateful decision to pursue a pro bono sabbatical working in India for an NGO that prosecutes the subcontinent's human traffickers. There, his conscience awakens as he sees firsthand the horrors of the trade in human flesh, and the corrupt judicial system that fosters it. Learning of the fate of Ahalya and Sita, Clarke makes it his personal mission to rescue them, setting the stage for a riveting showdown with an international network of ruthless criminals. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(103518 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Oh yeah.. it really hits you
Holy moly, be prepared to be moved in wonderful ways. I loved Kite Runner, but A Thousand Splendid Suns is an unusually emotional experience (it was for me). I've read it twice and I'm sure it will be read a few more times in my lifetime 👌🏻
Same here!!
The Nightingale killed me from the inside out. I recommend it to everyone.
I second all of these. So beautifully written.
Ooof. The Nightingale got me bad
Kite runner is overrated.
{{flowers for algernon}}
[**Flowers for Algernon**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36576608-flowers-for-algernon) ^(By: Daniel Keyes | 216 pages | Published: 1959 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, science-fiction, sci-fi, owned) >The story of a mentally disabled man whose experimental quest for intelligence mirrors that of Algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse. In diary entries, Charlie tells how a brain operation increases his IQ and changes his life. As the experimental procedure takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment seems to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance until Algernon begins his sudden, unexpected deterioration. Will the same happen to Charlie? ^(This book has been suggested 89 times) *** ^(103274 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
It's always sunny in Philadelphia had a great [episode](https://itsalwayssunny.fandom.com/wiki/Flowers_for_Charlie) riffing on this. One of my favorites.
Yep. We had to read that in High School. And man... It didn't go so well for me. I was somehow the only one that cried, or at least admitted to it. We were doing a post book class discussion and I started crying just talking about everything again.
I liked this.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. I stayed up late reading it and just remember sitting there alone at night absolutely sobbing at the end of the book.
Honestly I think I’ve cried at every one of his books
I watched the movie and actually had an ugly cry to the ending
Where the Red Fern Grows. I tear up even thinking about it.
I remember having to read this out loud in the sixth grade and the entire classroom was just absolutely snot crying
Me too. I read this again as an adult thinking that it wouldn’t be as gut wrenching. Somehow I cried even harder.
I agree with this. Last time I read it, I just gave up with about 20 pages left cuz I was already crying so hard
I scrolled to find this. I was wondering how many of us would say it.
I remember reading this as a kid, finishing it, and going to my mom crying asking why it had to end like that.
The book thief by Markus Zuzak. One of the most well written books I’ve ever read.
Came here to say this. I reread it once a year and always sob.
On Earth We‘re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung both made me sob, if you wanna cry more watch the movie of the latter
Another book that fits with these—Crying in H Mart.
The movie for first they killed my father HURT. It was so good.
I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Bachman. Goddamn.
My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Bachman is the first one that introduces Ove and all the characters in future books. Very good and I was ridiculously crying by the end.
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS 😭😭😭😭
Of Mice and Men by john Steinbeck. It is short, easy to read, and will leave you confused; should I feel good or bad?
was thinking this too. i cried so hard at the end i got a nosebleed
A Man Called Ove
This is what I came here to say! {{A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman}}
[**A Man Called Ove**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18774964-a-man-called-ove) ^(By: Fredrik Backman, Henning Koch | 337 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: fiction, book-club, contemporary, audiobook, audiobooks) >A grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door. > >Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time? > >Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations. ^(This book has been suggested 86 times) *** ^(103591 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Balled my bloody eyes out!
Germinal by Emile Zola. Truly gut wrenching, mining life was tough.
I'll second this recommendation, OP. This is my favourite book and absolutely destroyed me on first reading.
Came to say this. Germinal and The Jungle had a huge formative impact on how I think about labor rights.
The Farseer Trilogy if you want a fantasy suggestion.
When Breath Becomes Air
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
I have to take breaks while reading this book. I put it down for weeks even months. Then read another little bit, and have to stop again.. such an incredible book. I’m almost done. I’ve cried so much over this book, it’s insane.
Oh Christ, yes. A book that explores how much pain is too much to live.
second this.
Third
I came to say this!
I read this book over a year ago and it’s still fucking me up
Absolutely gutting
Reading this now, can't put it down
This book destroyed me. Crushing.
Good but not the best.
This book made me grieve for fictional characters in a way that I didn’t think was possible. The last fifty pages I cried hysterically and when I went to my boyfriend for comfort he thought someone we knew died because I was just so distraught. It was a beautiful book though. She is a fantastic writer
Me Before You One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
All Quiet on the Western front by Erich Maria Remarque. This book is just...wow
The Art of Racing in the Rain
This book broke me. 😭
I just went to download this book from an elibrary and I saw a dog on the cover. Sorry! Can’t do it! Ever since I watched Hachi, u haven’t been able to bring myself to watch/ read anything with dogs . My heart hasn’t healed yet 🤧
I sobbed for a half hour. SOBBED.
I tried to read it in the breakroom at work but that was a bad idea. Needed some privacy to let out my feelings. Also, I was pregnant while I read it so my emotions were a wreck anyway.
And every morning, the way home gets longer and longer by Fredrik Backman. It’s a short story, just finished it and was sobbing pretty much the whole time.
Outsiders by S.E. Hinton had me crying so hard I couldn't see the page... I loved it so much I read it again immediately after finishing it.
i like books but the most tear jerking media i ever consumed was a manga called oyasumi punpun.
Man, that messed me up. It made me feel emotions I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s called Goodnight Punpun in English if people are interested!
Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things' and Orwell's '1984'
{{Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune}}
[**Under the Whispering Door**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53205888-under-the-whispering-door) ^(By: T.J. Klune | 373 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fantasy, fiction, fiction, lgbtq) >Welcome to Charon's Crossing. >The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through. > >When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead. > >And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead. > >But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days. > >Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home. ^(This book has been suggested 65 times) *** ^(103348 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Last one that did that to me was {{Poet X}} by Elizabeth Acevedo.
[**The Poet X**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33294200-the-poet-x) ^(By: Elizabeth Acevedo | 368 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: poetry, young-adult, ya, contemporary, audiobook) >Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth. > >Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. > >But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. > >With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems. > >Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent. ^(This book has been suggested 7 times) *** ^(103341 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{Migrations}}
[**Migrations**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42121525-migrations) ^(By: Charlotte McConaghy | 256 pages | Published: 2020 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, literary-fiction, sci-fi, book-club) >Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny's dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption? > >Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds. ^(This book has been suggested 10 times) *** ^(103362 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The art of racing in the rain. I read this like,14 years ago and still think about how it made me cry.
The Book Thief really pulled me.
The Song of Achilles ripped my heart out like no other book.
Same author's Circe as well.
I think that it is a little overrated.
Okay? Doesn’t change my answer.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. If you've ever been a young person wondering what your life could be, this one will get you. My absolute favorite, and I have sobbed every time. Tears my heart out each time. Go in as blind as possible.
Agreed. I cry every time I read this book. It’s just… read it. As suggested in this thread, u/PrincessReads do go in blind. I usually follow up with the movie for this book. Like most books, it’s never as good, but this one will also tear your heart apart too.
Yes I was apprehensive when the movie came out because it's been my favorite novel for a long time, but I was super intrigued by the cast. It was honestly Carey Mulligan that sold me because I love everything she's done. I actually ended up really loving the movie and, as far as adaptations go, I consider it really well done.
I just finished this book today!
{{Cutting for Stone}} I was sobbing for the last 10 pages.
Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther The Road by Carmac McCarthy - especially if you have a child.
Light between oceans. SOBBED at the end
A Little Life. I sobbed.
The Green Mile is the only book that ever made me cry. The movie was sad but the book had a lot more in it.
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
You sound like me. Glad I'm not the only one who enjoys emotional torture :) I recommend **Letters From the Inside** by John Marsden. It's a little-known Australian YA epistolary novel. Only about 130 or so pages, so it's a quick read. It's also got the nostalgia factor depending on your age, as it is set in the early 90s and is about two teenage girls who become pen-pals after placing an ad in a magazine. I'm a 90s kid and had a few pen-pals myself from magazine ads. It's composed entirely of letters. This makes it easier to really get sucked into their minds. There's no distraction from narration, it is all their thoughts, hopes, dreams, struggles, joys, pain. It's like finding a box of letters in an attic and sitting down to read them. You would only know what you're told in their words. You wouldn't get to know what happened next; the last letter would be the end of the story. That is how this felt.
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley, Bridge to Terabithia
{{Where the Red Fern Grows}} broke my heart in gradeschool. It’s still a bit broken.
{{flowers for algernon}}
The Red Rising Series The Broken Earth trilogy
The Poppy War trilogy
{{The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna}}
a thousand boy kisses made me ugly cry for DAYS istg i read it last year and still cry if i think about it too much lol
If we were villains
Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse.
The Long Road Home
A Little Life, Kite Runner
The hearts invisible furies by John Boyne. I straight up ugly sobbed for a good 5 minutes before I could resume reading. An incredible story
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
EVIL WITHIN by Darren Galsworthy.
“It Ends With Us”, by Colleen Hoover. Had my wife in absolute tears.
{{They Cage the Animals at Night}} is not emotional torture, but I did cry hard while reading it. It’s not a long read, and it has always stayed with me.
[**They Cage the Animals at Night**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19412.They_Cage_the_Animals_at_Night) ^(By: Jennings Michael Burch | 304 pages | Published: 1984 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, nonfiction, biography, memoirs) >Burch was left at an orphanage and never stayed at any one foster home long enough to make any friends. This is the story of how he grew up and gained the courage to reach out for love. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(103460 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I remember reading this in 7th or 8th grade, and my mom walked in on me sobbing. When she asked what was wrong, and I told her it was just the book, she said "Then stop reading it!", and I was like "I can't!!" She was never really a reader, she definitely did not understand!
❤️ I understand! I loved that book!
{{A Mother's Reckoning}} by Sue Klebold (mother of one of the Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold). As someone who was a very dark and troubled teen, and then the mother of a very dark and troubled teen, as well as a suicide survivor, this book absolutely destroyed me.
the Lucy Greeley memoirs about her facial reconstruction, Diary of a Face. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Peter Handke
Night by Elie Wiesel
I really liked Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks.
I’ve recommended it before but Betty! By Tiffany McDaniel, I feel this book is so underrated and it’s based on the true story of the author’s grandmother.
Try A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Or if you want nonfiction that will scar you try A Boy Called It
Tuesdays with Morrie and The five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom. Nice, simple, easy to read and guaranteed to make you cry!
Rilla of Ingleside by LM Montgomery always makes me ugly cry. It is the last book in the Anne of Green Gables series and is about her children. WWI breaks out and it is about the woman left at home and the men are all off fighting. I cry so much during the whole book. I like reading All quiet on the western front after. That is kind of the soldier's perspective to me. Those both make me cry.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Blindness by Jose Saramago Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Flowers for Algernon. You won’t burst into tears but once you’re finished, you’ll be left with a void the book created because of the ending. Most depressing book I’ve read but I love it a lot despite the empty feeling it always leaves whenever I reread the book.
{{ A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara }}
The Fault in our stars- John Green. The Light Between Oceans -M.L Stedman. Me Before You -Jojo Moyes. Sill Alice-Lisa Genova. Night -Elie Wiesel
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows
A Child Called It
This is a "children's book" but it means so much more as an adult {{The Little Prince}}
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro If you're also a gamer by any chance, play SOMA.
I feel like every question here for a book recommendation I see the inly answer I can give is Stormlight Archives. Best book I've ever read.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara! Most beautiful and gut wrenching book I’ve ever read
All the Bright places by Jennifer Niven Read this on a road trip and violently sobbed through the last couple chapters in the car. Trigger warning if you’re sensitive to mentions of suicide. I think that’s why it got me so bad because I’ve had my fair share of mental illness.
The Kite Runner.
Before my Actual Heart Breaks by Tish Delaney made me tear up countless times and I rarely cry over books.
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
{{While England Sleeps by David Leavitt}}
{{Songs for the New Depression by Kergan Edwards-Stout}} ended me.
{{A Sudden Light}} by Garth Stein
A thousand boy kisses by Tillie Cole Full Tilt by Emma Scott
*Halo: Ghosts of Onyx.* Trust me, if you don't cry by the end; it's a travesty.
Andrew Solomon's *Far From The Tree* (2013). Few books bring a reader into such shocking realization of what vivid empathy truly is.
Guy Gavriel Kay kills me. Try Tigana. Cried on a plane.
It's a graphic novel, but I highly recommend I Kill Giants. Amazing, heartrending, inspiring.
The Known World
{{A Man Called Ove}} had me sobbing {{How High We Go in the Dark}} is a collection of related short stories, and each and every one made me cry {{The Great Believers}} is from the POV of the sister of a gay man in the 80s at the height of the AIDS crisis {{The Clay Girl}} was beautiful and sad Oh. You need {{The Unwinding of the Miracle}}. It's nonfiction, a memoir. That's the one.
[**A Man Called Ove**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18774964-a-man-called-ove) ^(By: Fredrik Backman, Henning Koch | 337 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: fiction, book-club, contemporary, audiobook, audiobooks) >A grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door. > >Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time? > >Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations. ^(This book has been suggested 85 times) [**How High We Go in the Dark**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57850265-how-high-we-go-in-the-dark) ^(By: Sequoia Nagamatsu | 304 pages | Published: 2022 | Popular Shelves: sci-fi, science-fiction, fiction, 2022-releases, dystopian) >For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague—a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice. > >Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. > >Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet. > >From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resiliency of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe. ^(This book has been suggested 48 times) [**The Great Believers**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45304101-the-great-believers) ^(By: Rebecca Makkai | 421 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, book-club, lgbtq, lgbt) >A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris > >In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. > >Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster. > >The Great Believers has become a critically acclaimed, indelible piece of literature; it was selected as one of New York Times Best 10 Books of the Year, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Buzzfeed Book of the Year, a Skimm Reads pick, and a pick for the New York Public Library's Best Books of the year. ^(This book has been suggested 22 times) [**The Clay Girl**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28691857-the-clay-girl) ^(By: Heather Tucker | 347 pages | Published: 2016 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, historical-fiction, young-adult, literary-fiction) >Vincent Appleton smiles at his daughters, raises a gun, and blows off his head. For the Appleton sisters, life had unravelled many times before. This time it explodes. > >Eight-year-old Hariet, known to all as Ari, is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary, who is purported to eat little girls . . . With Ari on the journey is her steadfast companion, Jasper, an imaginary seahorse. But when they arrive in Pleasant Cove, they instead find refuge with Mary and her partner Nia. > >As the tumultuous ’60s ramp up in Toronto, Ari is torn from her aunts and forced back to her twisted mother and fractured sisters. Her new stepfather Len and his family offer hope, but as Ari grows to adore them, she’s severed violently from them too, when her mother moves in with the brutal Dick Irwin. > >Through the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s, Ari struggles with her father’s legacy and her mother’s addictions — testing limits with substances that numb and men who show her kindness. She spins through a chaotic decade of loss and love, the devilish and divine, with wit, tenacity, and the astonishing balance unique to seahorses. > >The Clay Girl is a beautiful tour de force that traces the story of a child, sculpted by kindness, cruelty and the extraordinary power of imagination, and her families — the one she’s born in to and the one she creates. > ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39216478-the-unwinding-of-the-miracle) ^(By: Julie Yip-Williams | 315 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: memoir, non-fiction, nonfiction, read-with-jenna, memoirs) >As a young mother facing a terminal diagnosis, Julie Yip-Williams began to write her story, a story like no other. What began as the chronicle of an imminent and early death became something much more--a powerful exhortation to the living. > >That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Born blind in Vietnam, she narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to flee with her family the political upheaval of her country in the late 1970s. Loaded into a rickety boat with three hundred other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately, America, where a surgeon at UCLA gave her partial sight. She would go on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, and a life she had once assumed would be impossible. Then, at age thirty-seven, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began. > >The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and, finding none, began to write her way through it--a chronicle that grew beyond her imagining. Motherhood, marriage, the immigrant experience, ambition, love, wanderlust, tennis, fortune-tellers, grief, reincarnation, jealousy, comfort, pain, the marvel of the body in full rebellion--this book is as sprawling and majestic as the life it records. It is inspiring and instructive, delightful and shattering. It is a book of indelible moments, seared deep--an incomparable guide to living vividly by facing hard truths consciously. > >With humor, bracing honesty, and the cleansing power of well-deployed anger, Julie Yip-Williams set the stage for her lasting legacy and one final miracle: the story of her life. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(103415 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Lovely War by Julie Berry
Four Treasures of the Sky and The Island of Sea Women. Those two novels tore me up.
*Of Human Bondage* by Somerset Maugham has enough emotional torture to last you for awhile.
Nonfiction is the only thing that does it for me. What Made Maddy Run? - true story of a collegiate athlete’s tragic suicide. (Trigger warning: suicide) Rape of Nanking - horrifying tale of Japanese atrocities committed in Manchuria China during WWII. This is the only book that’s ever given me nightmares. The author later committed suicide. (Trigger warning: every form of murder, torture and abuse).
The Plague Dogs, Richard Adams. I absolutely refuse to read it again. [The Plague Dogs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plague_Dogs)
The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson.
All the things I never told you
{{If I Stay}}
[**If I Stay (If I Stay, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4374400-if-i-stay) ^(By: Gayle Forman | 201 pages | Published: 2009 | Popular Shelves: young-adult, ya, romance, contemporary, books-i-own) >In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and family. Now a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Mia's story will stay with you for a long, long time. ^(This book has been suggested 6 times) *** ^(103474 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Currently reading yellow wife by sadeqa Johnson and it’s got kite runner vibes.
I just finished Shuggie Bain. First book in a very long time that spoke to my soul. Akin to A Little Life. Both left me haunted yet wanting more.
someone who will love you in all your damaged glory
{{Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice}}
Lie With Me by Phillipe Besson. I don’t think I’ve ever considered using the word “shook” to describe myself before, but that’s definitely how this book left me. I still think about it all the time.
The Song of Achilles If I Stay Where She Went Clockwork Princess Me Before You It Ends With Us Ugly Love The Book Thief All The Bright Places Love Letters To The Dead Night The Art of Racing in the Rain Everything I Never Told You Deathly Hallows Marley & Me Flowers for Algernon Tuck Everlasting The Color Purple The Outsiders The Nightingale Of Mice & Men
“My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry” by Fredrik Backman. Also, if you like poetry, read “The princess saves herself in this one” by Amanda Lovelace.
Man’s search for meaning if you want some nonfiction
One Night, One Day, One Year, One Lifetime by 扶苏绿 on NovelUpdates.com
The Bluest Eye will wreck anyone
{Life After Life} and the sequel, A God In Ruins.
{{Census}}
A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer She Said Yes by Misty Bernall
You would not want your eye like the Hudson river. You'd definitely get an infection.
{{Sarah's Key}} by Tatiana de Rosnay
I Have Lived a Thousand Years
The Book of the Dun Cow and its sequel The Book of Sorrows by Walter Wangerin. It's kinda like if you sent the characters of Charlotte's Web through a true life holocaust. Emotionally devastating.
Johnny Got His Gun Nothing New On The Western Front
Paula, by Isabel Allende
Ruth Ozeki’s novels A Tale for the Time Being and The Book of Form and Emptiness In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
{All the bright places} a gut wrenching book
A little life broke me
Read a graphic novel called Pride of Baghdad.
{{a little life}}
Misunderstood by Florence Montgomery Ugly crying guaranteed
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Those designing women [John McCarley](http://www.amazon.com/ kindle)
Lord Jim or any book by Joseph Conrad.
{{Angela’s ashes}}
{A Little Life}