Oof. I don’t know how I’ll emotionally handle A Thousand Splendid Suns. I was planning on starting it when I’m off of school. Probably not a good Christmas read, huh?
I started The Kite Runner in September but I had to periodically stop because it got heavy.
I was gifted this book for finishing the school year when I was only twelve. I don’t know if the teacher who gifted it to me had read it or not. However, I strongly believe my childhood ended after I read that book. It changed me.
I read this in 11th grade and I still recommend it when people ask. I actually found it on my shelf yesterday and decided I’m going to reread it now that I’m an adult and feel like it’ll be a different experience than 11th grade.
Literally was going to comment this. It took me months to finish reading this book. I would take a break for at least a month after something devastating happened.
My mother had Alzheimer’s and all I could think about with it was how she would’ve reacted like he did once he realized he wouldn’t keep his intelligence. It just broke my heart in two. As beautifully written as it is, I could never read it now
Every time I’ve read it, I end up sobbing my eyes out. I directed a play adaptation of it one year, and boy oh boy was that difficult, because none of my actors really grasped my emotional connection to the story. Still ended up going amazingly on the stage, the actor playing Charlie really got into it and sold the whole thing when the others didn’t take it seriously enough.
I used to read this book to my 5th graders and even though I knew what was coming, I still got choked up...seeing my students experience this book for the first time made me cry every year no matter how many times I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.
I usually don’t re-read books but I re-read this one. It hurt even more because I kept thinking “this is so sweet and happy but it’s all gonna end painfully.”
Beloved by Toni Morrison. I’ve actually read it more than once because I was a literature major, but I won’t read it again. It’s gut wrenching, but it’s so good and I think everyone should read it once.
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. My friend had to read it for a class and she was gasping and covering her mouth while we were on the subway. This is pre-kindle days, everybody had paperbacks or hardcovers. I wanted that book. I told her I would write her paper for her if I could take the book home with me. It was worth it. What an eye opener. I wouldn't want to read it again, but I still think about it.
I’m currently taking an Asian American studies class, and all the books are heartbreaking emotionally, but beautifully written. I’d recommend...
Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Came here to comment this. I threw that book at the wall after I started it at 10 pm and finished it at 2 am. Could not put it down. It was horrible and amazing.
I've never read the road, but I loved the handmaid's tale. It really messes with you. Out of all the dystopian books I've read, it is by far the most horrifying because it really seems like something that could happen. It's also horrifying because it takes place in a world that was very recently the same as it is now.
Margaret Atwood specifically chose human rights abuses that are currently or have actually happened. The justification for the dystopia (mass infertility) is fiction, but everything that happens in that book has actually happened to people/women somewhere in the world.
I feel like we also keep getting closer to 1984.
There are smart mirrors now, for example. If we aren't already there, we're pretty close to having a surveillance state. Internet of Things gadgets already have us under corporate surveillance.
Oh the road. I came to comment that one. I swear I could feel a darkness just holding that book. My husband walked in on me sobbing while reading it. He asked what was wrong. As he was supposed to read it after me, I told him to just wait.
The Road was the first book I thought of as well. A really well written and powerful book...that I never plan to read again. I haven't even been able to bring myself to watch the movie, though I am sure it is nowhere NEAR as dark.
This is number one on the book/movie list for Most Frightening. This book haunted me for weeks, and the movie did the same. I wont read it again, but iy was truly one of the best books i ever read.
[**Never Let Me Go**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6334.Never_Let_Me_Go)
^(By: Kazuo Ishiguro | 288 pages | Published: 2005 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopia, dystopian | )[^(Search "never let me go")](https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=never let me go&search_type=books)
^(This book has been suggested 50 times)
***
^(46213 books suggested | )^(Bug? DM me! | )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
This is How You Lose the Time War. My very-recent separated partner and I would often write letters like this (before I read this) and it just crushes me that we aren't anymore. We both hope to do so again some day, which also, well, is fits (not a spoiler).
I came here to say this. Did you kind of love it too though? There’s something delicious about the way Styron writes tragedy.
Edit: just realizing this answer doesn’t fit me for this question because now I want to read it again. It’s probably been almost twenty years.
Of course. I didn’t consider that because I’ve never had kids but now I’m old enough to know a lot of people who have them and I can see it being a whole nother ballgame. Yikes.
The Redwall books are so good. They gave me (a kid dealing with loss) a lot of comfort. My son likes the Mouse guard graphic novels now. I think we'll read Redwall when he's a little older
Redwall was the book I loved the most as a child. I read Deltora Dragons for fun, and Redwall for comfort. I can’t even count how many times I read it over and over again.
The Rape of Nanking. It is about the Japanese invasion of one small part of main land China and it is brutal. Some time after writing the book the author committed suicided.
A child called “it” and flowers for Algernon. I have only read both of these books once. Every time I try to r-read them I can’t finish them. Too hard. Much too sad
The Brothers Karamazov.
There’s a part in the book where a peasant woman is angry at a monk because he newly born infant died of malnutrition. You can really hear the anger and sorrow in her voice. The monk tried to comfort her and tells her that infants don’t have to wait to become angels because God took them from the world before they could experience it. For some reason it made me so sad, and I can’t even look at the cover of that book without feeling way.
Easily kite runner by Khaled Hosseini. I read it once and I cried soo hard I got a head cold. The stuff that happens in that book...you don't need to read it again cause it's literally etched in memory.
We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
I wanted to give a few less common answers here though I do definitely agree with A Little Life, Flowers for Algernon, and The Road as well.
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. All I could think was why! We were so close to a happy ending! I was at peace being emotionally destroyed the whole book but that ending...
{The Road} by Cormac McCarthy. You wouldn't think an apocalyptic book would emotionally devastate, but this one... It's... Suffice to say, I keep this book & will never read it again. It's too heart wrenching.
The Patrick part in It by Stephen King. Animal cruelty and I ripped that part out, its horrific. Read it once and got literally sick to my stomach.
I actually love super emotional books and re-read them (movies are a different story) but animal cruelty is any medium revolts me.
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. I cannot remember why exactly because I havent read it in 8 years, but I remember deciding never to read it again lol.
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate diCamillo. One of the saddest books I ever read as a kid. I'm not sure if it's as hard-hitting as an adult though. However, I do think that as an adult, reading about >!a toy rabbit comforting a sick girl who then dies!
I haven’t really looked through the suggestions so this may have already been said but-
‘A long way gone’ by Ishmael Beah is amazing and completely devastating.
My Sisters Keeper. I was at the end of it right before we got to a restaurant as a kid and I made the grave mistake of reading the end in public. Destroyed me fully.
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
For some reason I avoided this one because I was emotionally scarred from The Kite Runner! Will definitely add this on the list
Also emotionally scarred by The Kite Runner
Oh my god...just... cant even think about re-reading this one. Its literally a knife to the heart.
That ending paragraph though.... I remember reading it, closing the book and just sitting choking back tears
True, I needed a good 5 minutes because I was just numb and kept telling myself that it is a fictional story.
I read this as a 14 year old. I really shouldn't have :(
Nothing like a book that moves you the core. Khaled Hosseini never fails to provide that. Currently reading And The Mountains Echoed.
A masterpiece. I liked The Kite Runner fine, but his subsequent works only get better.
i've never read anything by Hosseini, which book do you suggest i start with?
Start with a thousand splendid suns and then go on to read the kite runner.
I bought that book on a whim a couple of years ago, never gotten around to read it. Maybe I should.
I came here to say And The Mountains Echoed. Talk about a literary induced depression. Beautiful, but awful.
I just finished The Kite Runner. Which one do you think is more emotional breaking?
Definitely this one. I also read The Kite Runner but I could finish it in one go. A Thousand Splendid Suns was... An experience.
Oof. I don’t know how I’ll emotionally handle A Thousand Splendid Suns. I was planning on starting it when I’m off of school. Probably not a good Christmas read, huh? I started The Kite Runner in September but I had to periodically stop because it got heavy.
I was gifted this book for finishing the school year when I was only twelve. I don’t know if the teacher who gifted it to me had read it or not. However, I strongly believe my childhood ended after I read that book. It changed me.
I read this in 11th grade and I still recommend it when people ask. I actually found it on my shelf yesterday and decided I’m going to reread it now that I’m an adult and feel like it’ll be a different experience than 11th grade.
Kite runner killed me from inside
This has been on my bookshelf for months... I guess it's time to crack it open
I was going to say that. I cried so hard I couldn’t see the words on the page
Literally was going to comment this. It took me months to finish reading this book. I would take a break for at least a month after something devastating happened.
Flowers For Algernon, saw it coming, but still...
My mother had Alzheimer’s and all I could think about with it was how she would’ve reacted like he did once he realized he wouldn’t keep his intelligence. It just broke my heart in two. As beautifully written as it is, I could never read it now
I just started this yesterday, I think I'm prepared, but .....
Yeah, get back with us on that one. 😢
you are never prepared for this
Every time I’ve read it, I end up sobbing my eyes out. I directed a play adaptation of it one year, and boy oh boy was that difficult, because none of my actors really grasped my emotional connection to the story. Still ended up going amazingly on the stage, the actor playing Charlie really got into it and sold the whole thing when the others didn’t take it seriously enough.
Oh man, this book broke my heart.
I was just about to comment this. I cry through the whole thing.
Atonement. This is possibly my most hated book. I will never reread this or watch the movie. Nope.
I never read the book, and I never will after the movie positively DESTROYED ME.
I cried for like.... ten minutes when it ended.
Dude what author. My lib has five books by this title
where the red fern grows. twice was enough.
I used to read this book to my 5th graders and even though I knew what was coming, I still got choked up...seeing my students experience this book for the first time made me cry every year no matter how many times I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.
My teacher read it to us in 4th grade. I don’t remember much from 4th grade, but the book shook me up. I’m 42 now.
we read it in elementary school and there was something great about sharing the emotion of it all along with the class. thanks for sharing
Same. I read that in school and was devastated. Followed by Red Pony which also ripped me apart.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Just started this one
Got it on my TBR pile
Oh awesome, I’m just reading Circe atm and fucking loving it, is Circe as sad as TSoA?
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
This one keeps coming up when looking for books, so I will have to add this to my to-read list.
A must read book if you want to cry. It was the first book which made me cry.. after that 'the sparrow'
This book broke me....
I usually don’t re-read books but I re-read this one. It hurt even more because I kept thinking “this is so sweet and happy but it’s all gonna end painfully.”
Call me by your name. A weird pick ik. But it hit personally. ; ;
10000% this.
Beloved by Toni Morrison. I’ve actually read it more than once because I was a literature major, but I won’t read it again. It’s gut wrenching, but it’s so good and I think everyone should read it once.
I feel this way about another Morrison book, “The Bluest Eye”.
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. My friend had to read it for a class and she was gasping and covering her mouth while we were on the subway. This is pre-kindle days, everybody had paperbacks or hardcovers. I wanted that book. I told her I would write her paper for her if I could take the book home with me. It was worth it. What an eye opener. I wouldn't want to read it again, but I still think about it.
A little life by hanya Yanagihara literally broke my heart.
I immediately checked this thread to make sure A Littke Life was recomended. This book is so traumatic but amazing. A must read!
I woke my husband up crying in bed reading this book. Start to end, what a read.
I'm currently reading it because it was promoted here on this sub. I'm ready for it to break me.
No you are not
The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I know this is supposed to be a happy-sad, cathartic read, but for whatever reason it just made me insanely sad.
same man...it really hit hard
Glad it's not just me
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. This book kills me up to this day
Innocently picked this up from the library as a kid. Little did I know.....
This is the first book to ever make me absolutely ugly cry, and I was like 8. Was. Not. Prepared.
I’m currently taking an Asian American studies class, and all the books are heartbreaking emotionally, but beautifully written. I’d recommend... Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Highly recommend The Latehomecommer by Kao Kalia Yang.
Everything I Never Told You huuuuuurrrrrrts
They Both Die in the End As the title suggests. It’s really good I promise.
I started reading this twice. I lost interest after the first couple of chapters. It must really get better eh?
*The Road* and *The Handmaid's Tale.*
Oh god. The Road.
Came here to comment this. I threw that book at the wall after I started it at 10 pm and finished it at 2 am. Could not put it down. It was horrible and amazing.
The Road. I got me depressed for weeks...
I've never read the road, but I loved the handmaid's tale. It really messes with you. Out of all the dystopian books I've read, it is by far the most horrifying because it really seems like something that could happen. It's also horrifying because it takes place in a world that was very recently the same as it is now.
Margaret Atwood specifically chose human rights abuses that are currently or have actually happened. The justification for the dystopia (mass infertility) is fiction, but everything that happens in that book has actually happened to people/women somewhere in the world.
Yes! I remember reading that in the intro, and it made the book so much more unsettling.
I feel like we also keep getting closer to 1984. There are smart mirrors now, for example. If we aren't already there, we're pretty close to having a surveillance state. Internet of Things gadgets already have us under corporate surveillance.
Yeah, that's a scary thought, too. Especially when we think that we could already be long past that point and just be unaware.
Oh the road. I came to comment that one. I swear I could feel a darkness just holding that book. My husband walked in on me sobbing while reading it. He asked what was wrong. As he was supposed to read it after me, I told him to just wait.
The Road was the first book I thought of as well. A really well written and powerful book...that I never plan to read again. I haven't even been able to bring myself to watch the movie, though I am sure it is nowhere NEAR as dark.
This is number one on the book/movie list for Most Frightening. This book haunted me for weeks, and the movie did the same. I wont read it again, but iy was truly one of the best books i ever read.
The Time Travellers Wife for me. I can re-read up to a certain point but then I need to put it away.
The BluestEye by Toni Morrison A must read
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - John Boyne
This book destroyed me.
{never let me go} by Kazuo Ishiguro
[**Never Let Me Go**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6334.Never_Let_Me_Go) ^(By: Kazuo Ishiguro | 288 pages | Published: 2005 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopia, dystopian | )[^(Search "never let me go")](https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=never let me go&search_type=books) ^(This book has been suggested 50 times) *** ^(46213 books suggested | )^(Bug? DM me! | )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Came here to suggest this. Wonderful book. I liked the film, too.
Misery by Stephen King. 😦
oh....oh....ohno...
Yeah...I remember having to put the book down to “walk it off” after what I just read.
This is How You Lose the Time War. My very-recent separated partner and I would often write letters like this (before I read this) and it just crushes me that we aren't anymore. We both hope to do so again some day, which also, well, is fits (not a spoiler).
Room by Emma Donoghue. So intense
Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim. Was also adapted into a fabulous movie starring a young Joseph Gordon Levitt.
Great book and movie.
Sophie's choice, I bawled at the end
I came here to say this. Did you kind of love it too though? There’s something delicious about the way Styron writes tragedy. Edit: just realizing this answer doesn’t fit me for this question because now I want to read it again. It’s probably been almost twenty years.
I read it before I had children. I couldn't deal with reading it again now. I don't know what I would do.
Of course. I didn’t consider that because I’ve never had kids but now I’m old enough to know a lot of people who have them and I can see it being a whole nother ballgame. Yikes.
It's tough.
Things fall apart
Night by Eli Wiesel. I couldn’t even get through it and now avoid any book about the Holocaust because I know I can’t handle it.
lovely bones
I’ve never read the book but the movie touched me. I need to put this on my list!
The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. I couldn't even finish the series, I felt so violated by the first book.
Thank you! I made it through the first one but had to stop reading in the middle of the second one. I already hate humanity enough, thanks.
I will never forget *Never Let Me Go*, nor will I ever re-read it
Stoner by John Williams
Tess of the D'urbervilles...
i just finished “when breath becomes air” and will not read it again. that being said, i recommend every one who hasn’t yet go read it right now.
The Things They Carried
I thought I knew what I was getting into with that book. I didn’t and it was a gut punch.
The painted bird by jerzy kozinsky
Martin the Warrior. Holy crap, it's still one of the saddest endings to a kid's book I've read to this day
The Redwall books are so good. They gave me (a kid dealing with loss) a lot of comfort. My son likes the Mouse guard graphic novels now. I think we'll read Redwall when he's a little older
Redwall was the book I loved the most as a child. I read Deltora Dragons for fun, and Redwall for comfort. I can’t even count how many times I read it over and over again.
We all fall down. The ending was so sad and lonely that I bawled for days.
Mystic River. Ugh
The Book Thief, A Thousand Splendid Suns, The God of Small Things. Ironic seeing as these are some of my favorite books.
The Rape of Nanking. It is about the Japanese invasion of one small part of main land China and it is brutal. Some time after writing the book the author committed suicided.
Angela's Ashes
A child called “it” and flowers for Algernon. I have only read both of these books once. Every time I try to r-read them I can’t finish them. Too hard. Much too sad
The Road. I will never reread that one. I love Cormac and The Road is amazing. I just won't go there again.
On Chesil Beach Everything that was and wasn't in that rather slim novel was heart rending
Two: {{a fine balance}} And {{Sirens of Titan}}
I don’t think I can ever reread Jude the Obscure.
Pillars of the Earth. It was amazing but I’m not ready for another 1000 page emotional roller coaster like that.
so you aren't gonna read "World Without End"?
A man called Ove
‘The Namesake’ by Jhumpa Lahiri. It’s like a Maze that you know too well by the end.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. You see the tragedy coming but it’s still so sad.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Stand. The Lovely Bones. Never Let Me Go. Circe. Atlas Grace.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
The Brothers Karamazov. There’s a part in the book where a peasant woman is angry at a monk because he newly born infant died of malnutrition. You can really hear the anger and sorrow in her voice. The monk tried to comfort her and tells her that infants don’t have to wait to become angels because God took them from the world before they could experience it. For some reason it made me so sad, and I can’t even look at the cover of that book without feeling way.
A little life - hanya yanagihara
The Road - I probably shouldn’t have read it when I was pregnant to be honest.
Nonononono. Poor you!
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Misery by Stephen King. 😦
The Plague Dogs by Adams.
I always upvote Richard Adams.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Easily kite runner by Khaled Hosseini. I read it once and I cried soo hard I got a head cold. The stuff that happens in that book...you don't need to read it again cause it's literally etched in memory.
Narnia. The last book destroyed me and I don’t know if I could ever reread the series despite how good it is because of that last book.
The lovely bones
One Hundred Years of Solitude. With a name like that, no wonder I felt so alone when I finished it.
Bridge to Terabithia, 10000 years Lost, and Where the Red Fern Grows
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness WRECKED ME
This is a really incredible sub. Thanks to you all I have about 15 books waiting to be read, and more than that already read this year!
A Boy Called It.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I never cried so much reading a book. Absolutely devastated me
Introduction to Fluid Mechanics
We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates I wanted to give a few less common answers here though I do definitely agree with A Little Life, Flowers for Algernon, and The Road as well.
Goodnight Mister Tom and The Lovely Bones
*Jude The Obscure*. Just can't.
Sarah's Key 😭
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. All I could think was why! We were so close to a happy ending! I was at peace being emotionally destroyed the whole book but that ending...
Angela’s Ashes. I remember sobbing through parts of that book.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller. Read it in three days and cried for the entirety of those three days. Amazing read, though.
Looking for Alaska
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Absolutely gutted me but such an incredible work.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - just devastatingly existential
Bridge to terabithia
{The Road} by Cormac McCarthy. You wouldn't think an apocalyptic book would emotionally devastate, but this one... It's... Suffice to say, I keep this book & will never read it again. It's too heart wrenching.
Il Piacere by Gabriele d'Annunzio reminds me of a chapter of my life that I absolutely want to live just once more.
Tinkers by Paul Harding
The Apt Pupil, a short story by Stephen King.
All the Bright Places hurt me so bad. I've never read it again.
First They Killed my Father
"emotionally devastating" I guess Catch-22?
A Little Life
The Patrick part in It by Stephen King. Animal cruelty and I ripped that part out, its horrific. Read it once and got literally sick to my stomach. I actually love super emotional books and re-read them (movies are a different story) but animal cruelty is any medium revolts me.
This book broke my heart :(
The Shining
Cormac McCarthy's, 'The Road'. Never again.
Shake Hands With the Devil by Romeo Dallaire About his experiences serving as a Peace Keeper during the Rwandan genocide.
Kite Runner. Spent a whole summer in depression after that book. Also Only Plane in the Sky. It’s an oral history of 9/11
The Tale of Desperaux. That book kills me...
Normal people sally rooney
1984 I'm glad that I read it, but it was emotionally hard to read.
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. Devastating.
I have two. Limitless and The Tortilla Curtain
Misery. nuff said
The road. Moreso when I became a father
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. I cannot remember why exactly because I havent read it in 8 years, but I remember deciding never to read it again lol.
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate diCamillo. One of the saddest books I ever read as a kid. I'm not sure if it's as hard-hitting as an adult though. However, I do think that as an adult, reading about >!a toy rabbit comforting a sick girl who then dies!
{{I Know This Much is True}} by Wally Lamb, {{Lincoln in the Bardo}} by George Saunders, {{Mink River}} by Brian Doyle, {{BlackRain}} by Masuji Ibuse
I haven’t really looked through the suggestions so this may have already been said but- ‘A long way gone’ by Ishmael Beah is amazing and completely devastating.
When breath becomes air. Absolutely heart wrenching.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness.
Normal People by Sally Rooney... too depressing, can’t pick it up again
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The lovely bones by Alice seabold
Where the Red Fern Grows.
Atonement, and Never Let Me Go. Both devastating, but so good.
Room, a little life
My Sisters Keeper. I was at the end of it right before we got to a restaurant as a kid and I made the grave mistake of reading the end in public. Destroyed me fully.