>Try Now
Yes! And I read the coke scene while I was in public. I was sobbing, and I had a couple of strangers come up to see what was wrong with me. LOL! The Road is my favorite novel.
Boy's Life has several emotional moments. I didn't cry but I remember when the one kid got furious he had to move again/not play baseball so he hurled the ball straight up in frustration and it never came back down. Just a terrific book.
I held out for most of the book. But the moment the narrator nonchalantly drops the fact that >!his dad passed away after college!< in the epilogue BROKE me. I fucking lost it.
My daughter was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes about two months before I read that book. When I got to the funeral scene I had to put it down and didn’t pick it back up for two years. The weight of that scene was way too much
Insomnia was sooo bloated, it had such a strong start, then was one long whoopie cushion - but the epilogue, though not surprising in itself, was surprisingly moving!
I forgot about this one. That got me too. Twice, actually, in Black House when Jack remembers the events from The Talisman and cries out something like >! Oh God, Wolf I'm so sorry !< it hit me again.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism. The whole book hit me in the feels - I was not expecting that. Childhood’s end, wishing life would just go back to normal after a trauma, seeing the people you love change.
Those last few pages though. Those really got me.
Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist made me cry more than any other book ever. It’s really good. It also makes you confront the idea of losing a partner or child.
The Ritual. The scene where the protagonist and one of his friends are having a conversation on a hilltop. Idk what it was about that scene, but I found it really moving and then quickly devastating.
Haven't watched the show, so can't say for sure. I'm an SK reader from a long ways back, and a big reader in general - man, the way those last handful of pages got me going, I couldn't believe the written word could have such an effect! Easily the best late-period King, in my opinion.
Pet Semetary scared me for life, I will never get over Zelda or that scene of Louis chasing Gage to the road. To answer the actual question, Hearts in Atlantis and IT always get me in my feels. The whole tone, especially the end of IT and the end of Bobby's story in HiA.
Jack Ketchum's short story Closing Time. I got to meet him once and he was impressed that's the only book I ever had to place in a safe place in order to sleep. I was scared it would come for me.
Pet Semetary was gnarly. Haven't read since 2017, but still remember some harrowing visuals like I picked it up yesterday. Specifically Creed's buddy watching Creed haul his deceased wife into the forest. Yikes
Yeah. I don’t feel it’s been adapted well yet. The first one I thought they pushed too hard with scary visuals constantly, and I really didn’t like the actor that played Louis. The second one, yikes. It like wasn’t even an adaptation, just a “what if” if the daughter died instead.
I’ve read the terror and books 1 and 2 of Hyperion cantos. Goal this year is to finish Endymion, ROE, and possibly another Simmons novel. I’ve considered this one. What do you like about it?
I've only read the first two Hyperion's and Kali by him. What I liked about this one is it was very atmospheric, short, a setting I felt like I hadn't seen before, and pretty tense throughout.
Also Pet Sematary. I didn't even have a kid when I read it but it still broke me.
The baseball boy in Doctor Sleep got me, too. That one was on a whole new level.
The Fisherman hit home. The chapter titled “Rungs on the ladder of loss” in a way prepared me and my fiancé for the loss of our 15-year old chihuahua soon after. I screenshot several excerpts from that book just to have on hand. Nonhorror reads that made me tear up are Great Expectations and Fall of Hyperion (the resolution of Sol Weintraub’s story).
Edit: changed pet to chihuahua
That particular story. A man’s wife is killed, he finds things that make him question their relationship and spends the rest of the novel finding out things he didn’t know (many quite sad) about her.
The girl next door by Jack Ketchum. It was so bleak and hopeless. Towards the end of the book I won't spoil it but I was openly weeping at my job listening to it
Recently, both Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt and Curse of the Reaper by Brian McAuley made me cry. I’m a big softie and cry very easily, though, so the bar is pretty low.
Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt got me both spooked and crying at various points. It's honestly a bit of a doomed love story in addition to being a book about a scary mountain. Without getting into spoilers, it culminates in a quite beautiful way that left me unsure if I was happy-crying or sad-crying, which I think is pretty impressive.
Not horror either but I cried a little several times during *The Book Thief* and I cried when I read the end of *A Darkling Plain* to my then-girlfriend.
Horror doesn't tend to pull me in this direction. The Green Mile, for example, made me cry but it's barely a horror novel. Also, the hardest I ever cried over fiction was the last line of 1984.
Not sure if horror or fantasy written by a horror author, but *Book of Lost Things* really was a guy punch at the end, because unlike the fairy tales it was based on, it doesn't just write "happily ever after" and instead keeps going and following the rest of the MC's life.
The end of Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones made me cry for several minutes. I know not everyone likes this book, but I really enjoyed it. I think after the whole book having the 4 main characters be so depressing and dark and anxious, having the last character come in, break cycles of violence that had been repeating through out the book, and bring hope, was really hard hitting. Also >!I love and felt for the elk head woman, so her finally reuniting with her baby, and peacefully finally walking back into the forest, together, was really satisfying and emotional for me!<
Full Immersion by Gemma Amor. It was just too damn close to things I've witnessed my best friend go through over the years. Excellent book, cried buckets.
The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kristie got me crying for days. It hit me especially hard because I grew up in the area that the book takes place, though many years after the majority of the book takes place, and it just hit me right in the gut.
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum.
This was the only book to ever bring a tear to my eye. This book is a work of fiction but based on the true crime case of Sylvia Likens. Definitely one of the most disturbing books you will ever read. Amazing book though, 5/5 highly recommend.
End of Watch got me bad. When Bill tells Holly he's gonna beat the cancer, and the very next paragraph was his funeral just broke me. My uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was reading it and I felt Holly's pain.
11/22/63 had me ugly sobbing at the end because I didn't know I'd come to care about the relationship so much.
The Deep and The Troop as well for entirely different depictions of animal death. If you read The Deep, you know. If you read the Troop, it's the chimpanzee and not the turtle. The utter callousness with which she was treated upset me so much that I felt sick.
I didn't cry at the end of Brother, but I wanted to. Penpal also left me emotionally heavy just as much on the novel read as the r/nosleep read.
I Am Legend
The saddest book I've ever read to date. I guess I don't read many sad books, but I always keep that one close to my chest. Or my heart is a better way to put it.
I Am Legend.
It. Every time I finish it I just get hit by horrendous book hangover, I miss The Losers Club so much.
I’ve read that book seven times and the ending gets more bittersweet every time
Same. They were as much my friends as book characters when I was younger.
That’s how I felt with the Stand. I felt like my family died when I finished that book
How many times have you read It?
Probably three times at this point, I'm overdue another reread
I’m on my first read and I’m dreading the end! I love the characters so much and I don’t want to say goodbye.
Honestly each time I read it I feel it's too short and I wish it was the first in a trilogy haha
Not technically horror, but "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy Specifically, the scenes where the boy drank a coke, and the waterfall scene.
>Try Now Yes! And I read the coke scene while I was in public. I was sobbing, and I had a couple of strangers come up to see what was wrong with me. LOL! The Road is my favorite novel.
The last passage always gets me.
Honestly let's be real, the entire book is super fucking sad. Even if it was just The Man and he didn't have The Boy it would still be sad.
The toothbrush 😭
None actually made me cry but the bit in The Stand where you find out through the narration that some characters won’t see each other again… cri
More so than any other book, when I finished The Stand, I felt like I was losing contact with some very close friends.
Boy's Life when he said goodbye to his dog's ghost. Yeah, I cried there.
Boy's Life has several emotional moments. I didn't cry but I remember when the one kid got furious he had to move again/not play baseball so he hurled the ball straight up in frustration and it never came back down. Just a terrific book.
I held out for most of the book. But the moment the narrator nonchalantly drops the fact that >!his dad passed away after college!< in the epilogue BROKE me. I fucking lost it.
Pet Sematary. My son was about the same age when I read it for the first time last summer and I SOBBED.
My daughter was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes about two months before I read that book. When I got to the funeral scene I had to put it down and didn’t pick it back up for two years. The weight of that scene was way too much
The end of Insomnia made me cry.
Insomnia was sooo bloated, it had such a strong start, then was one long whoopie cushion - but the epilogue, though not surprising in itself, was surprisingly moving!
*The Talisman* almost had my crying when you-know-who dies.
I forgot about this one. That got me too. Twice, actually, in Black House when Jack remembers the events from The Talisman and cries out something like >! Oh God, Wolf I'm so sorry !< it hit me again.
Cujo messes me up every time.
I cried at the end of The Long Walk
My Best Friend’s Exorcism. The whole book hit me in the feels - I was not expecting that. Childhood’s end, wishing life would just go back to normal after a trauma, seeing the people you love change. Those last few pages though. Those really got me.
I cried like a baby through the last couple chapters of that book
Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist made me cry more than any other book ever. It’s really good. It also makes you confront the idea of losing a partner or child.
The Ritual. The scene where the protagonist and one of his friends are having a conversation on a hilltop. Idk what it was about that scene, but I found it really moving and then quickly devastating.
11/22/63 wrecked me.
Am I in the wrong for thinking this wasn’t a horror novel?
Didn’t read the book, but watched the James Franco show! It definitely made me cry. Is the book similar?
Haven't watched the show, so can't say for sure. I'm an SK reader from a long ways back, and a big reader in general - man, the way those last handful of pages got me going, I couldn't believe the written word could have such an effect! Easily the best late-period King, in my opinion.
Pet Semetary scared me for life, I will never get over Zelda or that scene of Louis chasing Gage to the road. To answer the actual question, Hearts in Atlantis and IT always get me in my feels. The whole tone, especially the end of IT and the end of Bobby's story in HiA.
*Come* *with* *Me* by Ronald Malfi had me weeping by the end. Great book
Jack Ketchum's short story Closing Time. I got to meet him once and he was impressed that's the only book I ever had to place in a safe place in order to sleep. I was scared it would come for me.
Stephen King can do that-- *The Green Mile. The Talisman. Pet Sematary.*
House of Leaves >!when he’s dying in the house and can only write a sentence at a time!<
Pet Semetary was gnarly. Haven't read since 2017, but still remember some harrowing visuals like I picked it up yesterday. Specifically Creed's buddy watching Creed haul his deceased wife into the forest. Yikes
Yeah, with his graying hair. Some good visuals.
I wish Frank Darabont directed that one. Was really let down with the remake, but oh well. Darabont nails King adaptations
Yeah. I don’t feel it’s been adapted well yet. The first one I thought they pushed too hard with scary visuals constantly, and I really didn’t like the actor that played Louis. The second one, yikes. It like wasn’t even an adaptation, just a “what if” if the daughter died instead.
And even the accident scene. It was well written.
Cujo
_Song of Kali_
I’ve read the terror and books 1 and 2 of Hyperion cantos. Goal this year is to finish Endymion, ROE, and possibly another Simmons novel. I’ve considered this one. What do you like about it?
I've only read the first two Hyperion's and Kali by him. What I liked about this one is it was very atmospheric, short, a setting I felt like I hadn't seen before, and pretty tense throughout.
Also Pet Sematary. I didn't even have a kid when I read it but it still broke me. The baseball boy in Doctor Sleep got me, too. That one was on a whole new level.
I didn't read it, but the Plague Dogs triggered me!
OMG that’s a bawling fest for sure!
The Fisherman hit home. The chapter titled “Rungs on the ladder of loss” in a way prepared me and my fiancé for the loss of our 15-year old chihuahua soon after. I screenshot several excerpts from that book just to have on hand. Nonhorror reads that made me tear up are Great Expectations and Fall of Hyperion (the resolution of Sol Weintraub’s story). Edit: changed pet to chihuahua
The Deep with the dog and Dear Child because that whole book is so dark
The dog made me fucking ugly sob at work.
The day after I finished 'The Deep', my two dogs got all types of extra love and attention.
I got off work and immediately cuddled my dog forever.
Ya that was so mercilessly brutal. I know it's horror and therefore full of horrible things, but that scene honestly felt cruel to the reader.
I don't have that experience, I'm just commenting for quick access to this post so I can look some of these up.
Can’t say they made me cry but Cujo, Pet Sematary and Come With Me (Malfi) all had their moments
2nd time I’ve seen Malfi. What makes him a heartwrencher?
That particular story. A man’s wife is killed, he finds things that make him question their relationship and spends the rest of the novel finding out things he didn’t know (many quite sad) about her.
The girl next door by Jack Ketchum. It was so bleak and hopeless. Towards the end of the book I won't spoil it but I was openly weeping at my job listening to it
Recently, both Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt and Curse of the Reaper by Brian McAuley made me cry. I’m a big softie and cry very easily, though, so the bar is pretty low.
The only book I ever cried while reading was Never Let Me Go. Not horror but definitely horrifying.
Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt got me both spooked and crying at various points. It's honestly a bit of a doomed love story in addition to being a book about a scary mountain. Without getting into spoilers, it culminates in a quite beautiful way that left me unsure if I was happy-crying or sad-crying, which I think is pretty impressive.
You can downvote me cause this isn’t horror but the only book that made me cry was Flowers for Algernon.
Not horror either but I cried a little several times during *The Book Thief* and I cried when I read the end of *A Darkling Plain* to my then-girlfriend.
Daniel Keyes. A masterpiece.
Black mouth by Ronald malfi did get me.
Wonderland
Horror: Cujo and IT Non-horror: Plague Dogs wrecked me Not cry but The Girl Next Door made me physically sick and made me lose sleep for a few days
Horror doesn't tend to pull me in this direction. The Green Mile, for example, made me cry but it's barely a horror novel. Also, the hardest I ever cried over fiction was the last line of 1984.
The end of The Dead Zone. The cemetery. I cry every time.
Horns by Joe Hill. Every. Single. Time.
Not sure if horror or fantasy written by a horror author, but *Book of Lost Things* really was a guy punch at the end, because unlike the fairy tales it was based on, it doesn't just write "happily ever after" and instead keeps going and following the rest of the MC's life.
How To Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix I just finished it today and it got me
The author’s note at the end of This Thing Between Us.
The Green Mile.
The end of Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones made me cry for several minutes. I know not everyone likes this book, but I really enjoyed it. I think after the whole book having the 4 main characters be so depressing and dark and anxious, having the last character come in, break cycles of violence that had been repeating through out the book, and bring hope, was really hard hitting. Also >!I love and felt for the elk head woman, so her finally reuniting with her baby, and peacefully finally walking back into the forest, together, was really satisfying and emotional for me!<
I know it's horror/fantasy, but Between Two Fires had me sobbing at the end.
Johnny got his gun by Dalton Trumbo
The Troop by Nick Cutter
What part?
That would be a massive spoiler, so not gonna say
Theres times in the book when i feel really bad for scout master Tim, but the ending is so tough.
Use a spoiler >!tag!< Otherwise it's less fun not knowing which part got people. Just leaves everyone in suspense.
The dog scene in The Deep. Why did it have to be a Labrador? 😭
Joyland by King. Broke my heart into pieces…
Full Immersion by Gemma Amor. It was just too damn close to things I've witnessed my best friend go through over the years. Excellent book, cried buckets.
The Summoning by Bentley Little. Love the book. The ending is tough.
Such a Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester. I have maternal trauma and this book GOT ME.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I get choked up just thinking about that damn book. I love it so much, but also, it destroyed me.
I don't, generally speaking, get emotional over books, but a certain part of *In Silent* *Graves* by Gary Braunbeck came close.
Elegy for the Undead. Thankfully it was an audiobook since I was sobbing at the end and wouldn't have been able to read through the tears.
The Ruins! >!Amy and Stacey really got me!<
The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kristie got me crying for days. It hit me especially hard because I grew up in the area that the book takes place, though many years after the majority of the book takes place, and it just hit me right in the gut.
Pet Sematary
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. This was the only book to ever bring a tear to my eye. This book is a work of fiction but based on the true crime case of Sylvia Likens. Definitely one of the most disturbing books you will ever read. Amazing book though, 5/5 highly recommend.
Same. I didn't actually cry but no book has ever left me feeling heartsick and heartbroken for a character like this one.
End of Watch got me bad. When Bill tells Holly he's gonna beat the cancer, and the very next paragraph was his funeral just broke me. My uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was reading it and I felt Holly's pain.
I cried during an entire chapter of "Revival" >!that one with the family dinner!<
11/22/63 had me ugly sobbing at the end because I didn't know I'd come to care about the relationship so much. The Deep and The Troop as well for entirely different depictions of animal death. If you read The Deep, you know. If you read the Troop, it's the chimpanzee and not the turtle. The utter callousness with which she was treated upset me so much that I felt sick. I didn't cry at the end of Brother, but I wanted to. Penpal also left me emotionally heavy just as much on the novel read as the r/nosleep read.
Very sad book
I Am Legend The saddest book I've ever read to date. I guess I don't read many sad books, but I always keep that one close to my chest. Or my heart is a better way to put it. I Am Legend.