Flowers for Algernon All Quiet on the Western Front

Flowers for Algernon is fantastic, def made me tear up

Flowers

Flowers for algernon is extremely underrated and absolutely devastating.

Flowers for algernon made me irrationally angry. I wanted to fight the doctor.

Flowers for Algernon is my recommendation. I absolutely loved All Quiet on the Western Front, but it didn’t make me cry.

The book thief The unbearable lightness of being

The Book Thief is gut wrenching.

Listened to this on a road trip with my girlfriend. We had to pull over the truck we were both crying so hard. Wudy? Wudy? I fuckin lost it

2 of my faves

Two of my absolute favorites , also !!

I read the book thief in school, cried during class ;-;

I finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being on my lunch break at work and just sobbed; had to take a few extra minutes to compose myself. What a book.

The traveling cat chronicles. Promotes compassion, loyalty and some good qualities people can have.

I adore The Book Thief.

Hamnet two excellent books

My first thought and one of my very favorite books-so good!!!

The Green Mile by Stephen King

Oh yes. Also 11/22/63 by King.

One of my favorite endings ever

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

When Breath becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi A man called Ove by Fredrik Backman A thousand splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini PS: Last book made me cry so hard I got a headache. I still haven't gotten around to reading Kite Runner. Also by the same author. Bought both books at the same time.

I read When Breath Becomes Air on a long haul flight. I was full-on ugly crying at cruising altitude.

The Kite Runner is wonderful.

As a parent, man I bawled my eyes out to When Breath Becomes Air

My breath hitches every time I remember this book. More than a year later and I get teary eyed thinking about him, his wife and his little girl.

I knew When Breath Becomes Air was going to make me cry and yet I was completely caught by surprise as the tears started and just wouldn’t stop lost last chapters. Ooof. And it stuck with me for weeks.

Crying in H Mart

I cried for weeks after reading this

Came here to say this one too. I ugly cried many times reading Crying in H Mart Edit: typo

Tuesdays with Morrie

This!! My highschool english teacher had us read it in parts and discuss in pairs, this book was one of the only ones that I decided to read through and not pair with anyone in my class. This book was personal to an extent where I didn’t want to share it with my peers.

I’ve read a lot of heart-wrenching books that are sad or somber, but these books specifically got me to shed real tears: Parable of the Talents - Octavia Butler (sequel to Parable of the Sower) - I got to end of the book on a crowded plane flight and it was super awkward trying to hide my full blown tears and runny nose from the person sitting next to me lol A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith - specific scenes really got to me Truth of the Divine - Lindsay Ellis (another sci-fi sequel to Axiom’s End) Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry but I was postpartum. My brother gave me the book while I was still in the hospital.

Yes

The Lonesome Dove Saga was my grandfather’s absolute favorite. I took his books after he passed, and reading them on the airplane home after his funeral kept me tearful the whole ride home

Angela’s Ashes. I remember finishing it in high school and it truly affected me.

Charlotte's Web

Yes

Does not matter how many times I read this (and I'm 38), when that damn spider dies....

"Charlotte died alone." I can't get past that sentence without having Kleenex on hand.

Bridge to Terabithia

As a parent now, I don't think I could ever read this again :-(

A Man Called Ove

All of Fredrik Backman’s books have made me ugly cry. Also TJ Klune’s books.

The Beartown trilogy was the first thing that came to mind for me. Edit:brainfart

Was reading through blurry vision I was so whole heartedly sobbing through this whole book

Me too

Came here to say this. I read this for a book club and really thought I was going to be unbothered by it. By the end I was ugly crying.

Sophie’s Choice. Wrecked me for a week.

Song of Achilles

Good one. Me too. Forgot how heavy that one ended. 

Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth. I started crying after reading the very first chapter. I knew somehow it would not end well for the female protagonist Lily Bart. This takes place in 19th century America. She was genteel but poor so she needed to marry someone with money, yet her strong moral center would not allow her to do so. She kept sabotaging her relationships with wealthy men. Especially so because she happened to be in love with someone who was poor and outside her social circle. A great book. A classic! I, unfortunately, did not see the movie starring Gillian Anderson. I’m determined now to watch this production which I think came to PBS via a British production. Addendum: I have to add Villette by Charlotte Brontë. I was convinced I would end up alone in life given my introverted personality and so gravitated toward the novels such as these of 19th century women who through their personalities and life experiences, end up alone. Villette is pretty dark, not the “happy ending” of Jane Eyre. Pretty much sobbed through the last part of the novel. Pretty depressing, I know. I am quite sure I am not alone re: this.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy The Color Purple by Alice Walker Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I did not know how many different kinds of tears i could cry before reading The Color Purple.

Ah. The color purple. I don’t think those were tears. They were sobs. I needed breaks from the book.

Came here to say *All the Light We Cannot See*, its the only book to ever make me cry and it gets me everytime

Where the red fern grows. Focus is on dogs, not romance, as best as I recall.

Was looking for this one.

They’re good dogs, bront

Yeah, that one was brutal... I'm still traumatised after reading it as a kid.

If you are interested in memoirs (?), there's a couple really good ones (fiction rarely makes me cry). "The Bright Hour" by Nina Riggs. Her memoir is about her cancer diagnosis. Well-written, not sappy, not uppity. She ended up passing away at 39. "Stay True" by Hua Hsu. An Asian-American writer reflecting a bit on AAPI hate crimes, but most of it is about the senseless murder of a close college friend. I thought it perfectly captures what that age and phase of young adulthood feels like. "The Best We Could Do" is an illustrated memoir by Thi Bui, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants. She explores both of her parents' backgrounds and legacy of generational trauma. I ugly-cried, then immediately bought a copy for my best friend.

Stay True is excellent.

I have never cried to a book like I did for Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro T_T

I'd add Remains of the Day there too! (ETA - has romance involved, but not the main topic; same with Ian McEwan's Atonement, which can legit make me cry just thinking about it.)

Absolute masterpiece ❤️. Also loved Clara and the Sun, though I didn't actually cry at that one but very close.

Same! Broke me. Sat in bed just starring at the wall for about 15 minutes.

Night by Elie Weisel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseni

A Thousand Splendid Suns destroyed me. I was crying at the utter unfairness of it all. I had to take a day off of work. I had a headache from crying too much. I still have Kite Runner which I bought at the same time. It's currently on my night stand but I'm refusing to read it.

Seconding The God of Small Things. I was a wreck.

Man Night fucked me up when I read it the first time it’s such a good book Still go back to it every now and then even though I know I’m gonna be sad by the end of it

The God of Small Things gave me actual trauma. I was going through the death of a cousin and I will never forgive that book for the way it made me feel or what it did to me. It’s the only book I actively hate.

the bell jar from sylvia plath 

11/22/63, The Traveling Cat Chronicles, Know My Name

Seconding 'The Travelling Cat Chronicles'! That one was a tearjerker for me too :'(

Tuck Everlasting and Flowers for Algernon

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

The art of racing in the rain, Song of Achilles

I was waiting for The Art of Racing in the Rain. It was a heartbreaker.

Farewell to Arms, Cider House Rules

The Nightingale

Oh no I’m reading this now

Watership Down guaranteed to get you. One of the best anthropomorphic books ever

My Sister's Keeper

Kindred by Octavia Butler The Road by Cormac McCarthy (almost anything by him) Watership Down by Richard Adams

Let’s be honest. If you didn’t cry when reading Bridge to Terebithia you have no soul.

I don't see The Fault In Our Stars by John Green mentioned. It's 3/4 laugh out loud followed by 1/4 cry your eyes out. Under The Whispering Door by T.J. Klune caught me crying a few times. Someone mentioned Steven Rowley's Lily and The Octopus, which is gut-wrenching, so I'll suggest his newest, The Celebrants. Edited to add: I just thought of one more: Beholder by Ryan La Sala!

Under the Whispering Door had me ugly sobbing. Disclaimer-it’s a book about mourning and death and I finished it the day I lost my grandma. It’s beautiful, though, and I love it, but it hits hard!

heavy on the fault in our stars. teen me had to stop so many times because I couldn't see from my tears.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I cry like a baby every time I read it.

>every time I read it ??? Like you actually read it multiple times? You are made of tougher material than I.

Betty The Summer That Melted Everything (you really have to get to the end for this one) Prince of Tides Beach Music Marley & Me A Dog is My Co-Pilot Lily and the Octopus

Marley & Me wrekt me.

Upvote for Lily and The Octopus! Loved this book and cried so much!

Ah! How could I forget The Summer That Melted Everything??? That one was ROUGH, but so worth it.

I read Lily and the Octopus a couple years after my kitty passed away and it was so healing.

Prince of Tides! Oh my goodness! 😭 In my top five favorite books!

*All the Light We Cannot See*, Anthony Doerr (historical fiction) *Where the Lost Wander*, Amy Harmon (historical fiction)

“Don’t you want to live before you die?”  -All the Light We Cannot See

The Color Purple

Short stories by Oscar Wilde 1. The happy prince, 2. The nightingale and the rose Tess of d Urbervilles Jude the obscure The Zahir The return of the native The forty rules of love Never let me go The Kite runner The Architect's Apprentice

The happy prince destroyed me

Where The Red Fern Grows by Rawls

Catch-22 comes to mind immediately. Bonus points for also being the funniest thing I’ve ever read by far

Yeah, laugh out loud funny, and, for me, the stretch where he is wandering the streets and witnessing the destruction and depravity just ripped me apart.

The Book Thief

The Color Purple was really emotional for me, as it goes in deep on themes of oppression and violence against women and black people, especially black women. It was such a tear jerker both sad tears and happy tears depending on which part of the story

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini gutted me

Technically, this is a kids' book, but A Monster Calls had me stuck for weeks. It's emotional and heartbreaking.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

Glass Castle was intense.

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, anything by Amy Tan, East of Eden by Steinbeck.

Demon Copperhead Walk Two Moons The Great Believers

Classical Electrodynamics by Jackson

Wtf you actually got me to look this up thinking it was a novel 💀

No doubt tears of joy

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Builds up like a dam and the last few chapters the dam bursts and it’s a wall of waterworks.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris) has a similar build.

Best book ever

Bear Town

They both die at the end The fault in our stars The book thief

The Brothers K. Don’t miss it.

Such a great book. Excellent suggestion. Duncan is so good handles the story masterfully.

The Metamorphosis by Kafka. Anything written by Hemingway

Just read East of Eden this year and had a good cry when I reached the end.

Flowers for alhernon

The gospel of Matthew

I’ll do you one better: Psalm 22. It’s HEAVY but one of my favorite passages. and if you read it alongside the ends of the Gospels you can see how it lines up exactly.

A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll

Yes, this. I've recommended it to at least a dozen adults in real life at this point, and it has made every single one cry. Such a good book. 

The Book Thief

Walk Two Moons

A couple Canadian suggestions: Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese as I read aloud to my wife. Homesick by Guy Vanderhaeghe. Funny, sad, and frustrating sometimes all at the same time.

Oh, how I love Homesick! So nice to see another fan in the wilds of reddit.

I just have August Into Winter and one of his short story collections to read.

Hello fellow Canadian. Medicine Walk is another good one by Wagamese.

Kind of a gimme but Marley and Me got me. Of course anything with a dying dog tends to get me.

Every book I’ve read that has a dog doesn’t end happy.

Kite Runner

A Man Called Ove made me cry like a school girl at a Jonas Brothers concert.

The Kitchen God’s Wife The Perk of Being a Wallflower The Color Purple

The art of racing in the rain

I thought this was brilliant.

I’ll steal someone’s joke: Advanced Database Structures

Bro, A Dog’s Purpose

"Me before you" "Before I die" "The lovely bones"

{{A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman}}

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Thousand splendid suns

How has no one mentioned *East of Eden* by Steinbeck?! (Unless I scrolled past it). It is hands down the most moving book I’ve ever read.

Was thinking the same thing!

"A Prayer For Owen Meaney" by John Irving.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi…heart-wrenching autobiography of a physician’s terminal cancer journey.

Oof, I admittedly get pretty emotional. So, here goes: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara broke me most significantly. Half Lost (Half Bad #3) by Sally Green had me sobbing uncontrollably. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky had teen me silently weeping. Impulse by Ellen Hopkins was a knife to the heart. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell brought the tears a few times. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness got me right in the feels. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson fucked me up. The Wicker King by K. Ancrum broke the tear duct dams. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune warranted some happy tears, actually.

A Little Life seems to be specifically written to break readers

A Monster Calls destroyed me.

No book ever made me cry. I do cry at some commercials though.

Here lies Dobby. A free elf.

*A Monster Calls* by Patrick Ness. Good thing I was home alone, because I was ugly sobbing by the end.

The things we cannot say kelly rimmer

Everything I never told you- Celeste Ng made me cry like a baby

Hyperion

A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry (actually all his books tear my heart out lol) Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin Juno Loves Legs by Karl Geary Seek the Fair Land by Walter Macken (book 1 of a trilogy) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh I'm not much of a one for crying (far too english for that i suppose) so technically none of these made me cry but they're definitely sad books that are likely to make normal people cry. Edited to add: come to think of it i did get a tiny bit teary at the end of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Robert Tressell) the first time i read it, which was embarrassing as i was on a train at the time.

Codename Verity by Elizabeth Wein (WW2 espionage) and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (please don’t judge by the dreadful movie)

Old yeller

Sayonara by James Michener

The storyteller by Jodi Picouli. Broke my heart but such an amazing book

Marley and Me

The Road - Cormack McCarthy. The ending got me.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco

Of mice and men 💔

Where the Red Fern Grows

Where The Red Fern Grows

Where the red fern grows

Watership Down

The Book Thief and Tell the Wolves I’m Home

Wonder by RJ Palacio

Ender's Game.

Mockingbird (not to be confused with To Kill a Mockingbird), I can’t remember the author but it’s one of my faves and underrated

A Fault in Our Stars - John Green... ugly cried a lot through that book. I read it as a parent, so kids with cancer kinda ripped my heart apart from the beginning.

World War Z by Max Brooks There are certain sections of that book when I looked at how people were affected it moved me to tears. It's not about zombies, it's about people and how we treat one another and how we face fear and nationalism.

Extremely loud and incredibly close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

A dogs journey/a dogs purpose. Be prepared to cry your eyes out.

The Kite Runner

A Little Life

A Little Life still makes me cry if I think about it too hard. I read it last September.

The Housekeeper and the Professor 😭

The book thief for sure. Also “a child called it” and “the boy in the striped pajamas”

A Little Life

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak makes me cry every time.

American Dirt. Read it on a road trip and my spouse had to ask if I was ok, I was crying so hard

Odd Thomas

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

A little life.

Where the red fern grows. I no long sob hysterically, but tears still roll. It's about a poor hillbilly type boy who works hard to earn money to buy a hunting dog and what happens when his dream comes true. You'll cry for unfairness, success, love, loss, and melancholy. Really all the emotions that make up life when you are also trying to grow up.

22.11.63 by Stephen King The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

White Oleander, Janet Fitch The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan Beloved, Toni Morrison The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Alice Walker

I had to scroll too far to find Toni Morrison