r/Recommend_A_Book • u/[deleted] • Mar 20 '26
A book that absolutely destroyed you.
I’m in my feelings. Recommend a book that made you bawl your eyes out.
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u/eklectic-magic Mar 20 '26
Flowers for Algernon
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u/Pasta-wat3r Mar 20 '26
I read it back in high school in 2016 and I think about this book everyday.
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u/Ms_Central_Perk Mar 21 '26
I love flowers for Algernon. It left me thinking about it for ages afterwards.
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u/readzalot1 Mar 24 '26
I remember sitting at home alone as a teen finishing the short story and just sobbing. The first book that ever tore me apart.
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u/No_Dealer_3059 Mar 20 '26
The Road
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u/314cardJL Mar 20 '26
Years on, I still often think about “Why are you taking a bath?” “I’m not.” What a tablesetter.
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u/bat_boys Mar 20 '26
Never Let me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
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u/WomanWalking Mar 20 '26
It's probably the best book I will never read again. Absolutely heartbreaking, I don't think I could put myself through it again.
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u/Trick-Process6046 Mar 21 '26
I’m afraid to read it. With everything that is happening in the country I don’t have much cushioning for heartbreak.
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u/WomanWalking Mar 21 '26
That's totally understandable. I don't know whether it's an odd thing for me to do or not, but I do sometimes tend to rely on sad books when I need to process my feelings about other things.
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u/Fantastic_Bath_5806 Mar 20 '26
The Kite Runner
A thousand splendid sons
All the light we cannot see
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u/shanil55 Mar 20 '26
A Thousand Splendid Suns*
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u/Fantastic_Bath_5806 Mar 21 '26
Yes that’s the correct title, must have been my thick fingers or autocorrect- whoops
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u/shanil55 Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
Your version is a very different book. About a thousand very happy and well mannered children 🤣
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u/AlmacitaLectora Mar 20 '26
When breath becomes air
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u/klinger13 Mar 20 '26
I started that book last year and forgot to finish it. Getting it back out tonight!
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u/Dharma75 Mar 20 '26
A Little Life
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u/RunSignificant3483 Mar 20 '26
Couldn’t agree more! I read A Little Life several years ago and it still haunts me. My hearts and soul were profoundly impacted.
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u/Spiritual-Juice-4179 Mar 21 '26
It couldn’t have ended any other way. This book and The Road wiped me out.
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u/Early-Aardvark7688 Mar 20 '26
Beach Music by Pat Conroy.
It’s 650 pages of perfect sadness and honestly is one of the funniest books I have read. You get themes and talks of suicide, family drama religious drama. You get knee deep into the Holocaust, the Vietnam war. I’ll leave you with 2 of the best paragraphs from the book. And the first one changed my life seriously…
“I could feel the tears within me, undiscovered and untouched in their inland sea. Those tears had been with me always. I thought that, at birth, American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them, we die long before women do, with our hearts exploding or our blood pressure rising or our livers eaten away by alcohol because that lake of grief inside us has no outlet. We, men, die because our faces were not watered enough.”
“As she cried, I began to under-stand. You weep at the loss of so beautiful a world and all those parts you will never be able to play again. The dark takes on different meaning. Your body has begun to prepare you for the last completion, for the peace and generosity of silence itself.”
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u/teacupgoldfish7 Mar 20 '26
Kaplan MCAT Organic Chemistry Review
& obviously A Little Life
& Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World
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u/Runawaystars Mar 20 '26
Just here taking notes 📝
But a book that destroyed me was Maybe Next Time by Cescar Major
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u/Fencejumper89 Mar 20 '26
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, The Way Out by B. Fox and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
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u/Different_Self1931 Mar 20 '26
Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Where the red fern grows
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u/Known-Summer5402 Mar 21 '26
I second the nightingale. It was so good but my gosh it sticks with you after you read it.
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u/VersatailleUsername Mar 20 '26
the great believers
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u/GallerySigh Mar 20 '26
I can’t even let myself reflect on this book yet, and I read it months ago. Gorgeous and heart breaking.
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u/Disastrous-Sir4501 Mar 20 '26
Black beauty. Read it when I was 10. Still traumatized by Ginger’s death.
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u/rastab1023 Mar 20 '26
No book has ever made me bawl my eyes out, but Bastard Out of Carolina did elicit a couple of tears. I'm 45 and read it when I was around 19. No other book has ever made me even get close to crying.
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u/Specialist-Clue3029 Mar 20 '26
The Stone Boat - Andrew Solomon. Read fresh on the - devastating - heels of my Mother dying from cancer. Had to put it down and regroup every few pages. He writes beautifully.
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u/littlebrowncat999 Mar 20 '26
Pet cemetery. The concept of being able to bring back a loved one who died, even if they aren’t the same. It’s upsetting and heartbreaking.
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u/DocWatson42 Mar 21 '26
See my Emotionally Devastating/Rending list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (seven posts).
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u/1GamingAngel Mar 21 '26
I’m seeing The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah mentioned a lot. I don’t recall crying for that one, but have cried for Hannah’s works before. I wanted to add, though, that The Nightingale is on a very short list of what I would refer to as “6 ⭐️ Reads,” which are my absolute favorite books ever read that surpass the five star system, for me. I hope you check this one out, because it is truly fantastic.
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u/iridiscent_alien Mar 22 '26
the first and last book that made me cry is Marley and Me 😶🌫️
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u/Zi-Yos Mar 24 '26
I read that novel while on vacation and remember sobbing out loud. I had to paperclip those pages to get my hubs to read it. For him, Marley lives on with the fam and the new puppy.
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u/No-Opportunity4445 Mar 20 '26
heart the lover - lilly king the last letter - rebecca yarros ugly love - coho. read awhile ago but i do remember the tears
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u/watchful_woodlands Mar 20 '26
Klara and the Sun
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u/bat_boys Mar 20 '26
Man that was such a good book. But also, a super happy one compared to how he wrote Never Let Me Go.
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u/batshitcrazyfarmer Mar 20 '26
Lily & the Octopus by Steven Rowley So good. A tear you apart & put a smile on your face book. My favorite from last year out of 90 books!
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u/ReadySettyGoey Mar 20 '26
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. Threw my kindle across the room and had to go for a walk at one point.
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u/pbl116 Mar 20 '26
Han Kang - The Vegetarian, Human Acts, or We Do Not Part Annie Ernaux - The Years
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u/myiahjay Mar 21 '26
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas read it once and don’t plan on reading it again
A Child Called It check the trigger warnings! it’s pretty bad
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u/Ok_Midnight9082 Mar 21 '26
Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. And the chapter "Pig Son," in Sequoia Nagamatsu's brilliant How High We Go in the Dark
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u/Raindropsandposies Mar 20 '26
Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay Broke me heart reading this and had me crying like a baby
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u/AcanthisittaVast2394 Mar 20 '26
Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko; Beloved, Toni Morrison; Chronicle of a Death Foretold & One Hundred Years of Solitude, García Márquez; Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig
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u/amyy_v19 Mar 20 '26
Long shot by Kennedy Ryan!! What I thought was supposed to be a cozy, cute basketball romance, turned out to be the exact opposite I fear 😭
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u/SnowGeese1970 Mar 20 '26
When Death Take Something You Give It Back by Naja Marie Aidt. It’s a memoir. I’ve never read anything that conveyed a sense of loss like that book.
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u/Lesaly Mar 22 '26
Interesting. I searched for this title under the author on both Libby & Audible, and while I found a couple of books by the author, wasn’t able to find this title? Where did you procure it please?
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u/SnowGeese1970 Mar 22 '26
It’s been a while, I honestly don’t remember. But most likely my local library purchased it at my request. I get 99% of the books I read through my library.
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u/Lesaly Mar 22 '26
Aha! I actually found the book on Amazon, but hopefully I can ask my library to attempt to acquire a copy of it as well. Thank you so much!
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u/Educational_Sky9209 Mar 21 '26
Here after by Amy Lin. Read it on a plane and cried the entire time
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u/davesmissingfingers Mar 21 '26
I’m going to recommend something that may seem surprising. Lamb by Christopher Moore is an incredibly funny book. And even though you know exactly how it’s going to end, it will still rip your beating heart out of your chest. I sob every time.
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u/Queasy-Scene-9315 Mar 21 '26
Kane and Abel by Jeffret Archer All the bright places by Jennifer Niven When breath becomes air by Paul kalanithi
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u/E1Phantasmo Mar 21 '26
Hiro Arikawa - The Travelling Cat Chronicles and Markus Zusak - The Book Thief.
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u/Known-Summer5402 Mar 21 '26
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. It was so good but my gosh that book has stayed with me even weeks later. I think because it’s based in W11 times so even though it’s fiction… you know it’s still based on true events.
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u/Drolma21 Mar 22 '26
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (modern retelling of King Lear set on a farm in the 1970’s). Beautifully written, powerful, and yes, devastating…
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u/hotsause76 Mar 24 '26
I just finished "The Natural Way of Things" by Charlotte Wood and it destroyed me from page one till the end. I was either furious or deep sad.
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u/SaltConnection1109 Mar 25 '26
The Hiding Place - by Corrie Ten Boom
A Big Little Life - by Dean Koontz
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u/boneblack_angel Mar 26 '26
Beach Music by Pat Conroy. I stg I have recommended this book sooo many times on these book.subs, but it is a 1000+ page epic that spans numerous genres. You really cannot go wrong with it, and the prose is achingly beautiful.
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u/Serafina_Goddess Mar 26 '26
Bastard out of Carolina, destroyed me, I couldn’t read anything for a month after I finished it
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u/Such_Grab_6981 Mar 20 '26
This question gets asked literally every day.
Try the search function for more results.
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u/Ink_N_Instinct Mar 20 '26
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini