Books that break your heart

Lots of these but also the ending of Atonement

One by Sarah Crossan, made me cry so much that I keep lending it to other people to make them cry too.

And since this is a parenting forum, Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson

Kite runner made me weep
Ditto a little life

I find Brideshead Revisted quite intensely sad, not the deep trauma of the above but the mourning for youth always resonated with me.

The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck; The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison; The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Oh, and Goodbye Mog.

Of Mice And Men.
The Book Thief.
Lord of the Flies.
The Fault In Our Stars.

Me before you - Jojo Moyes

All the light we cannot see - Anthony Doerr

Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult, there was a twist that just made me sob!

The bluest eye Toni Morrison

A Little Life is the only book which genuinely moved me, and I read a LOT.

Absolutely harrowing but so beautiful at the same time.

My sister lives on the mantelpiece
Sobbing every time

The Green Mile

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - A very un-Stephen King Stephen King book.

The Netherworld by George Gissing. Poor Jane Snowdon, no safety net, let down by one and all.

L'Assomoir by Emile Zola. All the waste and degradation

The first time I read Goodbye Mog, totally unexpected as I'm usually a bit of a stone.
Some of the stories in the The Little Wooden Horse , By Ursula Moray Williams, I clearly remember reading about when he goes blind and having to shuffle away with tears in my eyes when I read it when I was about six or seven before my brothers saw me and would have tormented me.
The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, so sad that she goes unnoticed and has to turn into foam. What a waste.

Definitely Eleanor Oliphant. So moving.

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain.
Cried buckets, DS2 called it my 'sad book'

The Things They Carried
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
All Quiet on the Western Front

(clearly a theme here...)

Also I remember crying on and off for days after finishing The Secret History though I can’t quite remember why!

I’ll second Before I Say Goodbye by Ruth Picardie. It’s a collection of letters she sends to friends and family after her cancer diagnosis. From the outset you know what’s going to happen and as she gets more poorly, it’s so incredibly sad.

Far from the madding crowd when the sheep are driven over the edge - this is personal though as it was my dads favourite book and he loved this bit. I read it aloud to him as he was dying so very poignant for me now (I hate hardy so my dad would find this amusing).

Green mile - ugly sobs

Harry Potter book 4 when Cedric is killed as it's so off hand (yeas I know this is tragic)

Beth dying in little women.

The end of Anne of The Island when she and Gilbert walk in the rain

The letter in persuasion because it's so romantic and full of longing

A Little Life for me too, so hard to read but one of the best books I have read in years.

Also the Nightingale, I am not a crier but I had tears streaming down my face at the end of that one. I was gripped from page 1 to the end.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson - had only ever read one book by her before and didn't like it. This one came up on my book group list and my heart sank but it was brilliant and moving.

The Time Traveller's Wife - I realised part way through how it was going to end and I didn't want to carry on but couldn't put it down either.

I've just finished Bridge of Clay by the chap that wrote The Book Thief. Cried a fair bit over that too.

War and Peace. I can read it up till the bit when Princess Lisa dies in childbirth, then I have to put it away.
To me, who almost died giving birth 50 years ago, it brings me to the horrors of it all. It must be the most dreadful description of death in childbirth ever written, and would not recommend it to anyone who is pregnant, especially for the first time.

The Unwomanly Face Of War by Svetlana Alexeivich. It's an unusual book in that it tells the stories of Russian women during WW2. Many of the stories are harrowing.

It's a very hard read, and if you don't cry you have a heart of stone.

Life on the refrigerator door by Alice Kuipers

Basically a teen dd and a single mum leave notes on the fridge door. Before during and after the mums battle with cancer.

It's my go to book when the need to cry as been building for a while. The ending gets me everytime

Yes I agree with A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner. Also My Sister’s Keeper and Lovely Bones. Can’t agree with the Hardy books, I detested every single one of his books!

Another good one is Recipe for a Perfect Marriage (can’t remember the author, Kate someone?)