What was the last book you read that really got to your heart?

[Yourinmyspot]

Mine is Project Hail Mary, I didn’t know anything about the story before I read it, just the cover blurb. I really, really enjoyed it and it really tugged at my heart strings. I won’t say anymore about it as I don’t want to give any spoilers away.

I couldn’t finish Demon Copperhead. I feel I should revisit it though?

Yep. Made th3 mistake of reading it on a long haul flight last week and howled my way across the Atlantic 😳

The Names

re Demon Copperhead, I've read it twice.

The first time, I kept getting distracted with the parallels with David Copperfield. Sometimes because I thought that the way incidents had been updated were very clever and sometimes because I felt protective over the original characters and felt angry about the way Barbara Kingsolver had changed them (especially Demon/David's mum).

Once I'd finished it, I reread David Copperfield.

Then I read Demon Copperhead again and found myself able to enjoy it as a book in its own right. It's depressing in many places because of the sheer awfulness of people's lives but I did end up becoming absorbed in it and really enjoying it.

I was crying reading this on the flight to my holiday. My teenage daughter was not impressed. I couldn't put it down.

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig. I lived in Ibiza for a while in the 90s and it really captured the mysticism of Es Vedra.

It made me feel very nostalgic.

The Clock Winder is my favourite Anne Tyler.

Agree with Demon Copperhead, The Names and A Terrible Kindness.

I will add:
A God in Ruins
&
A Fine Balance

Both endings broke my heart.

Also
Horse by Geraldine Brookes.

Me too. I loved that book so much.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

The summer my mother had green eyes

I have just finished "The Last Act of Love". It's a true story and so so very sad, a wonderful tribute to the authors brother.

A gentleman in Moscow by Amor towls
a fascinating mix of Russian history and the life of a count sent to live in his hotel and not allowed to leave it. There is so much more but I don’t want to say too much

So many here quoting this book that I feel like an outlier. Maybe because I expected a story about the power of names and finally it wasn't really that. It might have been the domestic abuse that got to me- I had to put it down. Not because I'm sad but because I get so angry. At violent men. And women who don't break free and protect their children.

Oh my. I'm about 70% through it on audible and I'm not remotely invested. Were you seriously interested in it from the start? Been trying to decide whether to listen to that very last chapter or whether to cut my losses.

Is there some mystery?.the only thing I guess that might be marginally interesting would be to find out why he's doing it..But I'm just not interested..is there a big reveal about something?.

Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier. It's a loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast, set in medieval Ireland. The heroine works as a scribe. Really lovely writing, intriguing set-up, and I cared about the characters.

Have you read Lily King’s Writers and Lovers, the novel to which it’s both a prequel and sequel? Utterly brilliant.

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton and Exit by Belinda Bauer.

I'm currently reading There are rivers in the skies, which I think may also end up on the list.

Also loved this.. have read her first book Writers and Lovers?

Also loved The Names

London Falling - it’s a true story that, tragically, no one apart from one guy, still left alive, really knows what happened.

The epilogue mirrors the denouement in the most moving way. I was in tears and I’ll never see London the same way again.

I agree, one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

It's good that this level of abuse seems implausible to you!
That's not true of everyone (I was a foster carer).
But anyway the question was what book moves you. A Little Life moves me. Bambi does too, not sure how plausible that is either!

Jude moves from one absolute monster to another, monks at a monastery, a brutal pimp-figure (Brother Luke), and a sadistic doctor who runs him over. This continuous abuse does seem implausible.

I think the 'problem' with A Little Life is not that continuous abuse is implausible - we all know it isn't. it's more that after a while it starts to read a bit like misery-lit - a bit.... how low can we plunder? Without giving away spoilers, one particular death did feel like Oh FFS - can he not have ONE thing? Do we have to spoil everything? Not implausible, but relentless.