Books that break your heart

[Moominfan]

Colson whitehead under ground railroad. He brought out another book knickel boys and I just can't bring myself to read it.

Room- I started it and just knew I'd be thoroughly depressed by this book so shelved it.

Some great suggestions here, thank you. I do like a good cry.

I didn't cry in Book Thief till almost the last page. And then it was like a punch in the stomach. Also cried/sobbed in Life of Pi. I read it by chance before it was famous.
Books can elicit such a profound physical reaction. I need to read more.

Eleanor Oliphant

After the End

The first time I cried over a book was when I read The Little Match Girl as a child.

Another vote for Never Let Me Go

Sofa me too x

Some great books listed here already. I was nervous about reading Goodbye Mog to my daughter but it is actually quite humorous and I think perhaps encourages a rational view about death!

Can never read Jude the Obscure again, nor Kite Runner or Book Thief - found them wonderful but very distressing!

Remains of the day is my favourite book and I cry every time, still can't bring myself to watch the film, though hopefully one day 🤞

A Monster Calls ruined me and I stupidly read it while on a plane. Total mess.

One that makes me cry is Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson (totally different genre to his usual stuff). I’m absolutely not a Patterson fan, but this one makes me sob like a baby.

On chesil beach. Only book I have cried at.

Goodnight Mr Tom kills me every single time without fail, even though I know exactly how it ends and could probably recite it word for word by now.
Wonder by R.J Palacio, recently made into a film. It's about a little boy with a face deformity who goes to school for the first time and it follows his experience and his family's and friends too. Film is brilliant but the book is always better and I sobbed for a few hours after finishing it.

Completely agree with the Fault in our Stars too! Killer.

If I Stay- Gayle Forman. Teenage girl in an accident with her family and choosing between staying alive to be with the love of her life and her grandparents or passing to be with her family. Devastating and heartfelt, really reminds you of the importance of family.

Paper Towns- bawled for weeks.

Holding up the Universe- Jennifer Niven. An overweight girl who's mother passed, a popular boy with a past, an unlikely relationship forms and they both come to realise the other is more than their first impressions. Absolutely killed me.

Flowers in the attic

A God in Ruins when Teddy's wife is dying. And a few other bits too.
Birds without wings.
The last in the northern lights trilogy when Lyra and Will part and agree to 'meet' at the same time in their respective worlds.
Some of Trainspotting was very sad but cant remember it now.

On Chesil Beach is literally one of the worst books I've ever read! It's so funny and interesting how subjective these things are!

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mizra. There's a scene where the father comes back from a business trip early and watches the rest of the family through the window getting on with life without him. I cried on the bus reading it.

Tess of the D'urbervilles
The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold fry.

Idblowjonsnow YY to A God in Ruins, I'd forgotten that. And I also agree with you about Amber Spyglass - people always talk about the Hester/Lee bit or the underworld bit, but it's the separation at the end that I find truly heartbreaking.

Gone with the Wind - it gets me every time.

Just finished Eleanor Oliphant, it didn’t even nearly make me cry! I enjoyed it, but my heart must be made of stone!

Wonder made a lot of my Y6 class cry. It also got a round of applause at the end.

For me, yes to Goodnight Mr Tom, Dogger, Me Before You and Eleanor Olliphant.

But the big sob fest has got to be Birdsong. Completely heartbreaking in so many places...the description of the first battle of the Somme is utterly tragic and horrifying.

Road just made me horribly depressed for a few days...I had to read something utterly frivolous to compensate!

13 Reasons Why, I watched the Netflix series too and it left me heartbroken

I like to read War and Peace.

The first time I cried over a book was when I read The Little Match Girl as a child.

Yes, totally, I had forgotten that one! In my case I was over 30 and reading a re-telling of that story by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run With Wolves. I kept picturing my little DD1 as the match girl.

Poor Cow by Nell Dunn was so similar to the story of my 20s that it made me cry. Unlike Joy, I had an education and never went anywhere near sex work, but that's because society had become so much more compassionate in the intervening 40 years. Now we're going back to the bad old days, minus the full employment of course.

I thought The Road was very badly written with an obvious (if persuasively argued) pro-firearms agenda. It read like a pretentious rewriting of something by James Wesley Rawles, whose naïve prose is preferable to Cormac McCarthy's affected faux-simplicity. My favourite part of both (in the sense of "most absurd") is the baby eating.

Room didn't upset me that much, but I found it very impressive. What I wouldn't give to be able to write like that!

Should have written "baby-eating" rather than "baby eating". Don't go there if you're squeamish, whether about cannibalism or about terrible writing.

Lovely Bones - I felt emotionally drained after reading it. Wouldn’t read it again.
Giovanni’s Room (sobbed on the tube at the ending) I read it every few years and cry every time
The Kite Runner
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
The Bonesetters Daughter (all Amy Tans books are moving)
The Invention of Wings

Paper Dolls. Every. Single. Time.

I cry at a lot of books. Quite a few fave already been mentioned. One that's not come up yet is On The Beach by Nevil Shute. I've read it a few times and found it heartbreaking. It's one of those ones that I'd love to read again but I fear that now i have kids it might properly break me.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly close is another one.

If you enjoy heartbreaking true stories I highly recommend

Wake up Mummy by Anna Lowe. True story about an abused child and alcoholic mother.

www.amazon.co.uk/Wake-Up-Mummy-heartbreaking-abused/dp/0091940516?tag=mumsnetforu03-21