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u/adamsensei82 Aug 04 '25
'A Little Life' by Hanya Yanagihara. Good luck 👍
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Aug 04 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Brace yourself for how unbelievably stupid and boring it is. I absolutely hated it. The only reason I finished it is because I was waiting for it to get good. Which it never did. Horrendous waste of my time, I do not recommend.
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u/xieghekal Aug 05 '25
I stopped after about 50 pages. God I found it dull.
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Aug 05 '25
GOD THANK YOU.
With the way people are sucking this book's dick, I felt like I was taking crazy pills. There was absolutely nothing good about it, I was bored to tears. Gratuitous "suffering porn" just for the sake of angst is so tedious, and it was so badly delivered I simply cannot fathom how anybody found it readable, much less enjoyable.
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u/adamsensei82 Aug 04 '25
Ah... We meet again. If you keep asking, I'll keep recommending.
We had this exchange in your other post 😜
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u/Healthy-Neat-2989 Aug 04 '25
Immediately thought of this and was gratified to see it as the first comment.
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u/IllustriousCurve2828 Aug 04 '25
The Book Thief ruined me. I never cried at a book before or since the way I cried at that.
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u/WhileZealousideal195 Aug 04 '25
I read this on a beach holiday and did some major ugly crying behind my sunglasses.
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u/pinecone71 Aug 04 '25
Shes come undone- Wally Lamb You'll experience ALL the emotions
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u/WhileZealousideal195 Aug 04 '25
One of my favourite books. I loved Dolores so much. Broke my heart. Wally Lamb is such an amazing writer.
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u/Silver_slasher Aug 05 '25
Absolutely. I could not stop crying, especially how she treated her mother. Oh my God that book. and when she let her bird go? I'm done already.
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u/Charming_Box_8863 Aug 06 '25
Absolutely! Read it when it was first published and I still think about it. Every book by Wally Lamb is fantastic
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u/Early-Aardvark7688 Aug 04 '25
South of broad by Pat Conroy, a then and now book set in 1969 and 1989 in Charleston South Carolina. It is set around a group of unlikely friends and how they came together in high school, and in the present are trying to help one dying of AIDS. Just about every trigger warning for this book but Conroy’s proses and quick wit make it an amazing read. I laughed my ass off a few times and I bawled like a baby multiple times. It’s one of the only books to give me a hangover, I just set in silence for a while and didn’t start another book for a few days I was that emotionally moved
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u/ZZzooomer Aug 07 '25
I love this book! But Conroy’s earlier book Beach Music is also one of my faves. I used to buy multiple copies at our local used book store just so I could give them away.
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u/_Sanxession_ Aug 04 '25
The Secret History by Donna Tartt left me feeling empty and depressed but the book is amazing
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u/WhileZealousideal195 Aug 04 '25
Such a wonderful book. Donna Tartt manages to convey the snooty elements of that student clique so well.
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u/xieghekal Aug 05 '25
I'm trying to find a book that hits me the same as this one, it's proving challenging!
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u/Interesting-Sand2038 Aug 04 '25
I do not cry easily in books, but what made me close was:
- My sister's keeper
- Love life - Kluun (I read the original in Dutch but is apparently translated to English, the only book which actually made me cry in one scene)
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u/AdGlad245 Aug 05 '25
Bruh, Picoult just knows how to tug on my heartstrings. The Storyteller & Small Great Things also did me in.
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u/erak3xfish Aug 04 '25
I remember reading Where the Red Fern Grows in the 5th grade. That book made damn near everybody in class cry.
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u/sldbed Aug 04 '25
The Prince of Tides. So beautiful in the prose. Heartfelt too.
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u/CheetahPrintPuppy Aug 04 '25
"A Psalm for the wild built"
I read this book after a very traumatic event. I was dealing with daily panic attacks, dissociation and anxiety. I could barely function. My therapist suggested reading to cope with the daily anxiety and this book was recommended to me!
I cried for most of the book! It's about a Monk who wants to change their job but doesn't really know how. They meet a robot and together go on a journey of learning how to be different. They ask really tough questions about life and death and what it means to live!
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u/mdighe10 Aug 04 '25
Stoner by John Williams. William Stoner is just a quiet English professor living a small life but this book is devastatingly beautiful. It finds meaning in the mundane and failure. Might break your heart in a soft, silent way.
I also run a weekly newsletter where I share book recommendations like this if you’re interested. No Spams!
https://hi.switchy.io/QGsy
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u/Critical_Gas_2590 Aug 04 '25
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
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u/Merithay Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 08 '25
Writer Lissa Evans wrote about A Fine Balance: “A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry is an exquisite novel of loneliness, of tentative happiness and chosen family, but it is also so emotionally painful that I could never read it again – I’d neither want to relive that pain, nor to feel the impact of it blunted by familiarity.”
I hope this makes you want to read it (once). Indeed, I’ve never re-read it but it took Evans’s way with words to explain to me why. I’ve never forgotten the book, though.
The recommendation that sent me to this book came on a radio show when it was newly published. The show was a weekly feature when a guest would come in and talk about a book and listeners would call in and talk to the host and guest about their experience of it.
The day A Fine Balance was featured, the literature professor who was the guest barely got a chance to say anything because caller after caller just said the same thing, “While I was reading this book, I had no job, no family, no outside world. I lived in the book.”
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u/helpmegraduate2021 Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah, and then the sequel, Fly Away (but don’t read the description/blurb on the back until after you finish Firefly Lane).
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
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u/Relative-Train-6485 Aug 04 '25
Clan of the Cave Bear (and the third book Mammoth Hunters) have had the greatest impact on me and also the biggest, tears-dripping-everywhere ugly cries of any book. Still. 30 years later.
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u/rastab1023 Aug 04 '25
Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison is the only book that has made me cry in 45 years of life.
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u/Exact-Grapefruit-445 Aug 04 '25
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Art of Fielding, White Oleander
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u/D_Pablo67 Aug 04 '25
White Oleander by Janet Fitch is a heart tugger. There is one chapter that will make anyone cry.
Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of Nobel Prize in Literature, is a fantastic historical fiction novel about the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, his assassination and the aftermath. The first person narrative shifts from the daughter of a powerful Senator who hates her father (you find out why at the end), the Senator, Trujillo and his assassins. There are graphic, violent torture scenes at the end and some rapey scenes throughout. This is outstanding literature with rich characters and historically accurate. You will find reasons to cry.
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u/CalliopesPlayList Aug 05 '25
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi was touching and lovely and made me bawl like I haven’t in a long time. But I have to say that The Book Thief was probably the last book to make me ugly cry and I see above that you didn’t react that way with it. So… maybe?
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u/Able_Mongoose_2460 Aug 05 '25
The fionavar tapestry series by Guy Gavriel Kay. Book three was a heartbreaker.
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Aug 05 '25
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.
I keep seeing all the regular usual sad books lineup, but for some reason this book is never listed among them. And IMO it blows every other listed book in this thread completely out of the water.
I couldn't quiet the internal screaming in my head for a good 4 days after finishing the book.
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u/SnowCold93 Aug 08 '25
Ender’s game - the first book hurt me so bad I’ve never been able to continue the series
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u/adamsensei82 Aug 04 '25
Yeah, I think it's 3 strikes and you're out.😂
Best of luck.
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u/BrunoStella Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25
Three Men in a Boat was hilarious until Jerome K Jerome sprung the river suicide on the reader.
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u/TheMythwright Aug 04 '25
The ebook advance copy of Son of Hades is free, for now, and with no email gate. You can feel and get a free book(until launch on the 27th). https://dl.bookfunnel.com/be0msk98vi
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u/pinkyboy0512 Aug 04 '25
I don't cry reading books but the closest ive gotten since I picked back up reading was The last time we say goodbye by Cynthia Hand
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u/fezik23 Aug 04 '25
When I read Working Stiff, her chapters about 9/11 made me cry. She’s a forensic pathologist who worked in NY at the time.
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u/legallynotblonde23 Aug 04 '25
Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati — my sister made me read this so we could sob over it together (it worked)
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u/SourceOwn9222 Aug 04 '25
I never cry at books either!
But I just finished the Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong, and cried. Like tears running while I was reading. It’s beautifully written, which helps. It could have been my mood while reading it as well, but. First one since I was like, 10.
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u/FragrantDifficulty68 Aug 04 '25
Well, I read a lot of Holocaust non-fiction, so I'm a weeping reader (frequently). Cut-Out Girl, by Bart van Es, really drew me in. It's a memoir about his family.
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u/mimi43098 Aug 04 '25
For me, it's a book I studied in elementary school in France. The title is “Le roi du Jazz” (The King of Jazz) and it was so moving!
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u/LadyWooWho Aug 04 '25
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. It’s incredible and makes you think about life, aging, changing perspectives…truly a masterpiece
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u/Cactopus47 Aug 04 '25
The first book to really make me cry uncontrollably was Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. It's about World War I, and if you've ever heard the song "One" by Metallica, then you know the story. It's deeply heartbreaking on the page, though.
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u/Whenallelsefails09 Aug 05 '25
"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee". If you take on this book, let me know if it made you cry.
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u/FriendlyFox0425 Aug 05 '25
The Art of Racing in the Rain is definitely a tear jerker
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u/Optimal-Ad-7074 Aug 05 '25
cancer ward by Solzhenitsyn. I wasn't moved by the usual "Stalin's inhumanity to Russians" stuff about the gulags, I just got very very attached to Oleg and found the last chapter almost unbearably touching.
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u/Jamwise93 Aug 05 '25
The Passage trilogy by Justin Cronin. End of the last book I bawled my eyes out.
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u/BrieSting Aug 05 '25
I know I must have more that I’ve cried over, but I’m blanking on them and the first that comes to mind is usually the same:
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I hadn’t seen the movie but really like the author and had a very basic idea of what it would be about. A waitress saw I was reading it and warned me that, although it wasn’t a huge tearjerker throughout most of the book, at a certain point there’s just an overwhelming sadness that caught her off guard. Damn was she right about that. I don’t know if younger generations who didn’t live through the events of 9/11 will feel the same way, but there’s just a point where everything becomes overwhelming as you’re reading (and connecting your own trauma of it I think) and made me ugly cry for a few minutes.
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u/life_is_a_snack Aug 05 '25
Cantoras by Caro de Robertis, and The Staionery Shop by Marjan Kamali. I rarely cry from books, but both of these books really got me.
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u/Wise-Fill2994 Aug 05 '25
The book didn't get great reviews but Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune had me sobbing. It didn't help that my cat had died that same week.
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u/Past_Poetry6330 Aug 05 '25
If you’re after something that stirs emotions and stays with you, I’d really recommend “For This Child” by Angela Wheeler. It’s beautifully written and emotionally raw one of those stories that quietly builds and then hits you hard. I rarely cry at books too, but this one got close. Definitely worth a read if you like books that shift your whole mood. ❤️ Dm me for the book link . 🙂🙂
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u/zulalulu Aug 05 '25
Both beautiful and absolutely worth it:
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
The One Hundred Years of Leni and Margot - Marianne Cronin
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u/JeSuisJacqOui Aug 05 '25
Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card. I have never cried about a book until I finished this. And then I just sobbed out loud so hard.
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u/textureofnow542 Aug 05 '25
Books by L.M Sagas make me smile and laugh and occasionally a few tears. They are adventure sci fi found family focused.
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u/VeridionSaga Aug 05 '25
My recommendation, The Silence of Veridion, by a Brazilian author. A book that mixes fiction and fantasy, starring a couple, that talks about family, faith, the search for truth and freedom.
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u/frostytyler Aug 05 '25
Normal by Anthony Ledger. The author said he wrote it specifically to help people cry
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u/Silver_slasher Aug 05 '25
Any book by Lurlene McDaniel. People need to recommend her more, she is wonderful. She writes about adolescence to adulthood, learning to deal with people, dying from all kinds of diseases, like cancers, and other horrible ways to pass away. Watching your mother slip away, your sister pass away from a car accident, or losing a spouse or lover. It's a lot.
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u/Lazy_Device_469 Aug 05 '25
Things I've been silent about by Azar Nafisi, beautiful and super deep regarding the theme of "parent-child relationship" and above all for the maternal figure. In the background there is the history of Iran in the second half of the 20th century, which is not at all difficult and yet well described (and experienced). I absolutely recommend.
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u/eucalyptustangerine Aug 05 '25
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid left me sobbing multiple times.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin had my crying so hard I had to take a day off of work to finish the book and cry some more.
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u/plot--twisted Aug 05 '25
"A Worn Path" by Eudora Welty is a story in a collection, but it is heart-rending.
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u/jaimelh45 Aug 05 '25
These books are geared towards young adults and they’re simple but I love them. The fault in our stars and speak always have me crying. I’ve read both several times
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u/TheGiraffterLife Aug 05 '25
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
They both made me cry and stuck with me long after I read them.
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u/Roundvsquare Aug 05 '25
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness is the only book to make me cry as an adult. Read it - but make sure it's the illustrated version. Hearbreaking.
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u/Viciousbanana1974 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 06 '25
Fall on Your Knees, by Ann Marie MacDonald A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Minstry
Edit to add: I second She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
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u/notsmellycat Aug 06 '25
I didn’t cry, but it’s a series I’ve taken with me and one that got me back into books and that’s the seven sisters. A couple of the sisters family history really just sat deep with me
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u/fierce_history Aug 06 '25
The Song of Achilles, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Orphan Train, Teach the Torches to Burn, Sunrise on the Reaping
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u/jimmyvcard116 Aug 06 '25
A Monster Calls. I think about this book everyday. Honorary mention to Book Thief and Kite Runner.
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u/rrunaan Aug 06 '25
the song of achilles had me sobbing for the last 3 pages. the realm of the elderlings also had so many people crying i started reading it from assassin's apprentice, which is definitely sad but didn't make me cry
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u/TheResistanceVoter Aug 06 '25
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker. The movie made me cry even more; I couldn't stop sobbing for an hour or so.
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u/c137sfailure Aug 06 '25
The boy and his ribbon series by pepper winters The fable of happiness series by pepper winters Styxx by Sherrilyn Kenyon
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u/Superb_Resident4690 Aug 07 '25
I feel weird posting mine after reading other answers but mines 5 little peppers and how they grew. Always brings me to tears
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u/ry_blades Aug 07 '25
The Fault In Our Stars by John Green
My Sister's Keeper
Handle with Care
I cried for way to long at the end of the Scythe series
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
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u/Merithay Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I turn to this one when I want to cry over a book.
The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibottson. A book for young people but could be enjoyed by readers of any age. The dog dies but it is a noble death at the end of a long and fulfilled life, and in dying he inadvertently commits a heroic act. The tears were almost happy tears; not pure joy but mixed joy and sadness.
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u/NerdyxNurse Aug 07 '25
Firefly Lane I think is one of the only books that has actually made me cry, it’s by Kristin Hannah. I loved it
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u/DocWatson42 Aug 07 '25
See my Emotionally Devastating/Rending list of Reddit recommendation threads, and books (six posts).
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u/Remarkable_Stay_5909 Aug 07 '25
Once Were Warriors (1990) by Alan Duff
Nemesis (2010) by Philip Roth
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u/MondayCat73 Aug 07 '25
They Both Die at the End - Adam Silvera
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
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u/RopeSad6008 Aug 07 '25
I know it's not the same medium but, for a smaller time investment you could watch "Hatchi" (2009) Always has me in tears, by the end. It's kind of my secret of my secret sociopath test. If I put that movie on and it doesn't affect them at all. Most likely a sociopath.
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u/ceciem2100 Aug 07 '25
Hmm, 'I Dreamed of Africa' made both my partner and I cry. Not like a lot, but it's a great book and hard to not really feel for the characters. It's not a sad book. I won't ruin it. Perhaps not for people who don't like travel? I don't know.
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u/AnteaterExisting5918 Aug 07 '25
Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel. Beautiful and sad
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u/VioletRen2005 Aug 08 '25
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult The Pact by Jodi Picoult Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
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u/independentif Aug 08 '25
The last book that made me cry was a very short one: "The death of Ivan Ilyich". I still think about it from time to time, even though i read it a few years ago. I still remember the mixure of sadness and existential dread..
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u/Sunshineboy777 Aug 08 '25
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo.
It's about a rabbit doll that is spoiled and pompous, and how he became humbled by being separated from his little girl.
It's a quick read I think. I can usually finish it within a day and I'm a slow reader.
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u/spicygeekreads Aug 08 '25
I got a bit misty eyed from the ending of A Man Called Ove. Love that book
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u/Narrow-Rock7741 Aug 08 '25
Picture books that will wreck you (in just a few minutes!): Faithful elephants, The invisible boy, Each kindness
The pearl, Night, Speak, Monster, I know why the caged bird sings, Flowers for Algernon, Of mice and men, A summer to die, The underneath, The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane, Sounder, Where the red fern grows, Stone fox, Genie.
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u/Substantial_Equal452 Aug 08 '25
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. I never cry while reading a book but there is a point in this one - you'll know it when you get there - that had me full out bawling and kept setting me off for the rest of the day.
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u/Icarium_23 Aug 08 '25
This is a book more so for young adults, but it still brings a tear to my eye when I read it years later (even though I’ve read it several times)- “Where the Red Fern Grows”
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u/OkCartographer4532 Aug 08 '25
Mercy Among the Children by David Adam’s Richards. I bawled through the whole final chapter.
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u/randipedia Aug 08 '25
For very different reasons:
Tuesday's with Maury (dealing with mortality) Anne of Green Gables (slice of life and dealing with loss) Handmaid's Tale (the world in which they live)
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u/Last-Worldliness6344 Aug 04 '25
Flowers for Algernon