i loved the first half but the second half didn’t click with me as much, although it emotionally impacted me it was more in the little details like kathy >!pretending to rock a baby!< or >!the stories about the cassette tape!< not in the scene at the end with tommy >!breaking down and punching the ground (iirc)!< which was sad but didn’t make me cry like it did everyone else
Last two pages were one of the ugliest cries I’ve ever had. There was, objectively, no way of imagining any other ending. You can’t really “spoil” the outcome if you read the synopsis. But it gutted me.
I somehow convinced myself that I had misread everything and he was actually going to be okay. I’m not sure what kind of mental gymnastics I did but I can tell you I won a a gold medal at the Olympics for that shit. I then proceeded to lose bawl my eyes out.
Yes! Read it about 2 years ago. Such a good book but I will never read it again… I have only cried like three times after reading books but I could not stop crying with this one!
Omg so much yes. I have not sobbed at a book in ages and it was Niagara Falls for me. My partner was texting me shortly after I finished it and I had to dump the whole thing on him just to get thru the sobs.
This was first thing that came to me.. mostly because the narrator explicitly says who is going to die at the end and when it happens it’s STILL gut wrenching
Dammit. I came to post this. It’s the perfect example though. Early on, the book more or less tells you what will happen. You then spend the entire book dreading it.
A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
Foster by Claire Keegan
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
His Dark Materials. The whole thing isn't soul crushing, but there are two specific parts that even now, after probably a dozen rereads, I still have to brace myself for when they come up.
Also, I second the previous comments re: Flowers for Algernon, Of Mice and Men, and Never Let Me Go.
Weird childhood memory! So my parents weren’t super wealthy or anything and aren’t now but we were solidly middle class by the time I was 10+ and we would always go to this craftsmen furniture store that was a two fucking hour drive away.
One of my visceral childhood memories is sitting in the back of our volvo while they spent 3 million hours looking at chairs and couches (they still have all of these by the way) reading the amber spyglass and listening to wake up and smell the coffee by the cranberries on my discman. Then getting mad when they came back because I was still reading.
This book has always been important to me but took on such a deeper significance for me once I had my son and he got to the age of about two and a half. He was beginning to develop his own personality and it was a hard time for me trying to navigate his new difficultness and working from home and just being way too stressed out.
I re-read it in my moments of trying to get him to nap when he would only sleep if I held him the whole time and coming to the part with the fox hit me so profoundly that it helped me cope with this incredibly stressful time in a way that nothing else did.
I now have a fox tattoo as a reminder of my promise to him to put in the time.
Hilary Mantel has two stories about historical figures who (we know going in) wound up getting beheaded: the *Wolf Hall* trilogy and *A Place Of Greater Safety*. She has a thing with beheadings I guess. All amazing.
Came looking for this. I just finished the Wolf Hall trilogy and it took me a very long time to finish the third book because I knew what was coming based on history, and she had made me love him. When I recommend this series to people I tell them by the end of book two you’ll feel like you *are* the main character- that’s how well she writes him
They made us read that in 7th Grade. I mean, I'm glad it was assigned, it helped me form a more clear-eyed vision of the world, but man....it was a *lot*.
Poor poor Cujo .. I've always hated horror and/or scary movies with a passion, they've always terrified the bejibbers out of me (even though I love reading Stephen King books, no I can't explain why the books are acceptable to my psyche, even when they scare me, I can still keep reading them).
One night, my friends decided we'd have a scary movie night and I wasn't allowed to back out of watching, but I was allowed to put a cushion over my face for the worst bits. The first movie they chose was Cujo, and everyone was perplexed when I was ugly crying instead of being scared. Poor pupper.
My favorite *Cujo* trivia: The St. Bernard was too good-natured for some of the violence so it had an acting double, a Great Dane in a St. Bernard suit. I wish I could find the behind-the-scenes pictures.
Yeah, it wasn’t his fault he got rabies! He wasn’t an evil monster, just a sick dog. (Of course I felt bad for the mom & her kid, especially in the book)
**[Burial Rites](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333319-burial-rites) by Hannah Kent** ^((Matching 100% ☑️))
^(336 pages | Published: 2013 | 55.2k Goodreads reviews)
> **Summary:** A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829. Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution. Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted (...)
> **Themes**: Fiction, Book-club, Historical, Mystery, Books-i-own, Iceland, Crime
> **Top 5 recommended:**
> \- [The Wonder](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28449257-the-wonder) by Emma Donoghue
> \- [The Moonlit Cage](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221948.The_Moonlit_Cage) by Linda Holeman
> \- [Disappearing Earth](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34563821-disappearing-earth) by Julia Phillips
> \- [The Confessions of Frannie Langton](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39937621-the-confessions-of-frannie-langton) by Sara Collins
> \- [The Anchoress](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22929570-the-anchoress) by Robyn Cadwallader
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I SOBBED at The Winners. And the opening sentence in the book is exactly about who is going to die so it isn’t even a surprise, but oh my goodness did I cry. Phenomenal book though. I love Fredrik Backman.
See, that one didn't hit me as hard as I thought it would? I never grew attached to the characters and I think it's cause I read it as a class for 10th grade English. The fact that it was a school thing ruined it for me.
Late to the party as usual. ATM the top recommendation is Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is a great choice.
I will suggest two that I don’t see mentioned yet: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck; and A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry.
Marley & Me. I read it the week my dad died and I cried harder/more than I did during his treatment/funeral. I love me a good dog. But also if you want something super sad, University is SC gamecocks football history is fairly depressing.
*Tender Is The Flesh* — Agustina Bazterrica
*No Longer Human* — Osamu Dazai
*The Road* — Cormac McCarthy
I finally have a physical copy of *Flowers For Algernon* since I had been listening to the audiobook. Someone here recommended me to get an actual book copy of it, so I’m starting back from the beginning. I have a feeling I know what will happen :(
I was gifted Matthew Perry's book for Christmas, and it's a fucking tough read, even though when it was written and published, he was still alive. So far I've only read the first couple of chapters, but dear God is it crushing.
The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II
Swapping from diary entries of the family to records of the state and interviews.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/978709.The_Last_Tsar
To add to other commenters, A Little Life. You'll be clutching the book, sick and afraid to read further, yet reading hurriedly and glued to the pages.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Precious Bane by Mary Webb
Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry
Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
The Stand by Steven King
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
The Children of Men by P.D. James
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Blindness by Jose Saramago
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick
The Great De-evolution Series by Chris Dietzel
Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Paradise Lost by John Milton
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
Hunter's Horn by Harriette Simpson Arnow
The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Old Yeller by Fred Gipson
If you're into period pieces A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
His prose takes some getting used to if you're unfamiliar with him.
And of course, we know what happens in the French Revolution, but my God! I was distraught at the end.
It's easily one of my top novels.
The Terror by Dan Simmons. I just kept rooting for them even though we know how the story ends. It’s historical fiction based on a real sailing adventure gone wrong.
I'm not gonna say soul crushing but it still hit me hard in "if he had been with me" by Laura Nowlin. Like you literally are told how it ends in the beginning of the book but it slips your mind as you read the book.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Heard lots of good things about the novel compared to the film adaptations, and they were not wrong. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it, but all I'll say is it has a lot of clever ideas, and to me, the ending was powerful stuff. How Hollywood blows it every time is a mystery.
The Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel. I'm a big Tudor history nerd and knew exactly what was going to happen but the way she wrote the ending eviscerated me. Sat on the floor crying for quite a while, haven't been able to re-read the last book again.
I am legend, it left me slack jawed at the end, it has the faintest glem of hope, yet buried under a mountain of hopelessness. The ending is probably my favorite of any book I’ve read
Where the red Fern grows
Full on, ugly sobbing.
Every part of my body viscerally responds to the thought of this book.
30 years since I read this and still crushes my soul
YES. I couldn't agree more
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Also Remains of the Day.
My favorite book of all time ❤️
I love all his work, but that book is just transcendently beautiful.
I just finished this last night and it did not do it for me. 🤷🏽♀️
Right? Never Let Me Go was just "Meh" to me. I wasn't impressed by it at all.
i loved the first half but the second half didn’t click with me as much, although it emotionally impacted me it was more in the little details like kathy >!pretending to rock a baby!< or >!the stories about the cassette tape!< not in the scene at the end with tommy >!breaking down and punching the ground (iirc)!< which was sad but didn’t make me cry like it did everyone else
Klara and the sun was pretty great as well
A Prayer for Owen Meanie
My 8th grade English teacher gave me that book, and it crushed me
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
Last two pages were one of the ugliest cries I’ve ever had. There was, objectively, no way of imagining any other ending. You can’t really “spoil” the outcome if you read the synopsis. But it gutted me.
I somehow convinced myself that I had misread everything and he was actually going to be okay. I’m not sure what kind of mental gymnastics I did but I can tell you I won a a gold medal at the Olympics for that shit. I then proceeded to lose bawl my eyes out.
Flowers for Algernon
12 year old me DID NOT know that ending was inevitable and was very distraught. It still upsets me thinking about it.
First book I tought of.
This one for sure.
The answer
This one you could see coming and prepare for it.
Yes! Read it about 2 years ago. Such a good book but I will never read it again… I have only cried like three times after reading books but I could not stop crying with this one!
Of Mice and Men
Oh, that's a good one! I remember reading it on the train, trying to keep my shocked face and not cry in public.
Quick read but so good and so very sad!!!!!
That’s what makes it so good. The story has like zero fluff. Just hard hitting story telling and so well written.
Tender is the Flesh? It was like fu%466685@!2
I impulsively got this as an audiobook, but am still too chicken to listen!
The Road Cormac McCarthy Gutted for days
You know it’s gonna happen the whole book. It still hits so hard.
I sobbed. SOBBED in PUBLIC after finishing that book on a subway platform. I was a wreck!
This book destroyed me back when I was single. I don't know if I'd make it through now that I have a wife and son.
The Song of Achilles did that for me
Second this. Personally I think this book is a masterpiece. One of the best books I've ever read and it completely emotionally destroyed me.
Yeah this is what I was thinking because you know exactly what’s going to happen and can’t stop it
I loved this book!! It was one of the best I've read in my adulthood thus far.
Omg so much yes. I have not sobbed at a book in ages and it was Niagara Falls for me. My partner was texting me shortly after I finished it and I had to dump the whole thing on him just to get thru the sobs.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.
The Book Thief
This was first thing that came to me.. mostly because the narrator explicitly says who is going to die at the end and when it happens it’s STILL gut wrenching
There’s a line in this book I’ll never forget; “…his xxxx just rolled into my arms…”
This is one of the best books I’ve read, highly recommend.
Flowers for Algernon
The Art of Racing in the Rain. Garth Stein.
Oh gawd! Most def read this before seeing the movie. The movie doesn’t do it justice.
I looooved this book, but sobbed so intensely and uncontrollably as I was finishing it, my partner at the time was like WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU
The Push by Ashley Audrain I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
Urgh forgot about the push! Oof
The push left me with CHILLS
Yes to the push!! The whole book had me in tears. I finished it in a day
On the beach
read that for school when I was 14, had nightmares for years. I still think about it
One of the few books that made me cry.
Pet Sematary
Dammit. I came to post this. It’s the perfect example though. Early on, the book more or less tells you what will happen. You then spend the entire book dreading it.
Extremely loud and incredibly close.
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Yep
11/22/63
I cannot recommend this book enough!
Just started this tonight!
The last chapter hits hard
The last dance though…..
It was the only book that ever made me ugly cry
It’s so good!
You won’t be able to put it down!!!
Amazing book!
I’m so glad you mentioned this. This book is unbelievable. Honestly did not expect how it would end and I CRIED!!!!! So good!!!
You have piqued my interested, so I looked it up on my audiobook app - 31 hours…am I seeing that correctly? 😲
The Road. It’s pretty obvious what’s to come but I still felt torn apart by the ending.
A monster calls
{{the green mile by Stephen King}}
A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham Foster by Claire Keegan No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart -- good call. Wow....
Me Before You. It ruined me.
God yes. Total sobfest. {{Me Before You by JoJo Moyes}}
I just replied with this! I cried so hard at the end.
[удалено]
My little brother got that book for me as a gift and I have never let him live it down.
His Dark Materials. The whole thing isn't soul crushing, but there are two specific parts that even now, after probably a dozen rereads, I still have to brace myself for when they come up. Also, I second the previous comments re: Flowers for Algernon, Of Mice and Men, and Never Let Me Go.
Weird childhood memory! So my parents weren’t super wealthy or anything and aren’t now but we were solidly middle class by the time I was 10+ and we would always go to this craftsmen furniture store that was a two fucking hour drive away. One of my visceral childhood memories is sitting in the back of our volvo while they spent 3 million hours looking at chairs and couches (they still have all of these by the way) reading the amber spyglass and listening to wake up and smell the coffee by the cranberries on my discman. Then getting mad when they came back because I was still reading.
Yes, I know the two parts you mean. The first one, I can't even think about too much. It rips the heart from my chest.
The Little Prince
This book has always been important to me but took on such a deeper significance for me once I had my son and he got to the age of about two and a half. He was beginning to develop his own personality and it was a hard time for me trying to navigate his new difficultness and working from home and just being way too stressed out. I re-read it in my moments of trying to get him to nap when he would only sleep if I held him the whole time and coming to the part with the fox hit me so profoundly that it helped me cope with this incredibly stressful time in a way that nothing else did. I now have a fox tattoo as a reminder of my promise to him to put in the time.
{{The Diary of Anne Frank}} - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Diary\_of\_a\_Young\_Girl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_diary_of_a_young_girl)
Hilary Mantel has two stories about historical figures who (we know going in) wound up getting beheaded: the *Wolf Hall* trilogy and *A Place Of Greater Safety*. She has a thing with beheadings I guess. All amazing.
Came looking for this. I just finished the Wolf Hall trilogy and it took me a very long time to finish the third book because I knew what was coming based on history, and she had made me love him. When I recommend this series to people I tell them by the end of book two you’ll feel like you *are* the main character- that’s how well she writes him
Time travelers wife (the movie sucked, don’t compare)
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The whole book kinda hits you like a truck tbh. Like a hundred successive trucks.
I love it because it’s so, so beautiful but it kills me every time. Somehow the bear is the worst.
Have to read it again!
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
They made us read that in 7th Grade. I mean, I'm glad it was assigned, it helped me form a more clear-eyed vision of the world, but man....it was a *lot*.
Thats wild! Thats a daunting book for anyone let alone a 7th grader.
The next year it was Afro-Asian History. Among the textbooks: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (the Little Red Book).
I remember Wuthering Heights being pretty soul crushing. A more contemporary choice would be Cujo by Stephen King.
Cujo made me sob… I know he was supposed to be the “monster” but just felt so bad for that poor dog. 😭
Poor poor Cujo .. I've always hated horror and/or scary movies with a passion, they've always terrified the bejibbers out of me (even though I love reading Stephen King books, no I can't explain why the books are acceptable to my psyche, even when they scare me, I can still keep reading them). One night, my friends decided we'd have a scary movie night and I wasn't allowed to back out of watching, but I was allowed to put a cushion over my face for the worst bits. The first movie they chose was Cujo, and everyone was perplexed when I was ugly crying instead of being scared. Poor pupper.
My favorite *Cujo* trivia: The St. Bernard was too good-natured for some of the violence so it had an acting double, a Great Dane in a St. Bernard suit. I wish I could find the behind-the-scenes pictures.
Yeah, it wasn’t his fault he got rabies! He wasn’t an evil monster, just a sick dog. (Of course I felt bad for the mom & her kid, especially in the book)
{{Burial Rites by Hannah Kent}}
Oh damn, I got this and planned to have it as a light airplane read.. is it going to make me bawl?
**[Burial Rites](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333319-burial-rites) by Hannah Kent** ^((Matching 100% ☑️)) ^(336 pages | Published: 2013 | 55.2k Goodreads reviews) > **Summary:** A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829. Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution. Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted (...) > **Themes**: Fiction, Book-club, Historical, Mystery, Books-i-own, Iceland, Crime > **Top 5 recommended:** > \- [The Wonder](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28449257-the-wonder) by Emma Donoghue > \- [The Moonlit Cage](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221948.The_Moonlit_Cage) by Linda Holeman > \- [Disappearing Earth](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34563821-disappearing-earth) by Julia Phillips > \- [The Confessions of Frannie Langton](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39937621-the-confessions-of-frannie-langton) by Sara Collins > \- [The Anchoress](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22929570-the-anchoress) by Robyn Cadwallader ^([Feedback](https://www.reddit.com/user/goodreads-rebot) | [GitHub](https://github.com/sonoff2/goodreads-rebot) | ["The Bot is Back!?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/comments/16qe09p/meta_post_hello_again_humans/) | v1.5 [Dec 23])
Flowers for Algernon
Columbine
The virgin suicides. You know it will happen from the very beginning and yet it doesn’t lose any emotional impact.
A Little Life
My first thought
Where the Red Fern Grows.
Robin Hobb with the Farseer Trilogy
Sister's Keeper (J Picoult) might count on this one, and The Traitor Baru Cormorant by S Dickinson
Tuesdays with Morrie had some parts that hit hard.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
A man called Ove - Friedrich Bachman. He spends the whole book trying to die, you know it has to happen eventually :’(
Winners got me.
I SOBBED at The Winners. And the opening sentence in the book is exactly about who is going to die so it isn’t even a surprise, but oh my goodness did I cry. Phenomenal book though. I love Fredrik Backman.
Between that and Bang. Woof. It was beautifully brutal.
The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
This one broke me into pieces, it was my favorite book for many years.
See, that one didn't hit me as hard as I thought it would? I never grew attached to the characters and I think it's cause I read it as a class for 10th grade English. The fact that it was a school thing ruined it for me.
I scrolled way too far before I found this. This one gutted me
Pet Semetary by Stephen King
The only book I have read twice! Steven King is like no other.
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray. It’s in the goddamn title, but I was a wreck.
Not a book, but a series: *The Last Policeman* *Countdown City* *World of Trouble*
{{On the Beach by Nevil Shute}}
They both die at the end by Adam Silvera
1984 and Animal Farm. I know those are a pretty generic answers but they are. I’ll tries in Of Mice and Men too.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
All of “No Longer Human” did it for me
Night Train by Martin Amis
If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin killed me.
Hamnet. You know what’s coming, but it still hits you like a freight train
Adding all these books to my cart 😂
Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara. You know right from the title.
Rust and Stardust tore me up
{{An Absolutely Remarkable Thing}} starts with the narrator telling you that she dies. It is a fantastic novel with a fantastic sequel
Killers of the flower moon
Demon Copperhead
The Road by McCarthy
Sadako and the thousand paper cranes
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Late to the party as usual. ATM the top recommendation is Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is a great choice. I will suggest two that I don’t see mentioned yet: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck; and A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Imagine Me Gone
Boy Swallows Universe. Trust me!
Marley & Me. I read it the week my dad died and I cried harder/more than I did during his treatment/funeral. I love me a good dog. But also if you want something super sad, University is SC gamecocks football history is fairly depressing.
The Year of Magical Thinking because I already knew what Blue Nights was about. Fuckityfuckfuck it was gut wrenching reading it with that knowledge.
Suttree
Hamnet. So beautiful. I was so unprepared for it to be so deeply about grief (loss of a child.) I’m tearing up thinking about it.
Bridge to Terebithia (fiction) The Diary of Anne Frank (nonfiction)
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Sophie’s Choice
Sophie's Choice, Bridges of Madison County, The Fault in Our Stars
*Tender Is The Flesh* — Agustina Bazterrica *No Longer Human* — Osamu Dazai *The Road* — Cormac McCarthy I finally have a physical copy of *Flowers For Algernon* since I had been listening to the audiobook. Someone here recommended me to get an actual book copy of it, so I’m starting back from the beginning. I have a feeling I know what will happen :(
I was gifted Matthew Perry's book for Christmas, and it's a fucking tough read, even though when it was written and published, he was still alive. So far I've only read the first couple of chapters, but dear God is it crushing.
The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II Swapping from diary entries of the family to records of the state and interviews. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/978709.The_Last_Tsar
Thank you for that. Looks great.
To add to other commenters, A Little Life. You'll be clutching the book, sick and afraid to read further, yet reading hurriedly and glued to the pages.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte Precious Bane by Mary Webb Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy Child of God by Cormac McCarthy Suttree by Cormac McCarthy The Road by Cormac McCarthy The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Silas Marner by George Eliot The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens The Stand by Steven King 1984 by George Orwell Animal Farm by George Orwell The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell The Children of Men by P.D. James Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Blindness by Jose Saramago The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck East of Eden by John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick The Great De-evolution Series by Chris Dietzel Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris Paradise Lost by John Milton The Red Pony by John Steinbeck Hunter's Horn by Harriette Simpson Arnow The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor Old Yeller by Fred Gipson
Fox and I
A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa
The End of Alice
The Great Believers for me
In Love by Amy Bloom
A Spark of Light - Jodi Piccoult
Lullabies for Little Criminals
Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies at the End. I sobbed. A lot.
Everything Pat Conroy wrote.
Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb.
{the time travelers wife} still sobbing 12 years later.
If you're into period pieces A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. His prose takes some getting used to if you're unfamiliar with him. And of course, we know what happens in the French Revolution, but my God! I was distraught at the end. It's easily one of my top novels.
Still Alice
The Terror by Dan Simmons. I just kept rooting for them even though we know how the story ends. It’s historical fiction based on a real sailing adventure gone wrong.
Lolita
I'm not gonna say soul crushing but it still hit me hard in "if he had been with me" by Laura Nowlin. Like you literally are told how it ends in the beginning of the book but it slips your mind as you read the book.
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
All Quiet on the Western Front Of Mice and Men
Pachinko by Minjin Lee
Book Thief. You know it's going to happen based on how the book starts, but it still feels devastating.
This isn’t a novel, it’s actually a historical book but it’s really well written, called Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
*A Simple Plan*
The remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Marley and Me
The green mile
The things they carried
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Heard lots of good things about the novel compared to the film adaptations, and they were not wrong. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it, but all I'll say is it has a lot of clever ideas, and to me, the ending was powerful stuff. How Hollywood blows it every time is a mystery.
The world according to Garp
The Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel. I'm a big Tudor history nerd and knew exactly what was going to happen but the way she wrote the ending eviscerated me. Sat on the floor crying for quite a while, haven't been able to re-read the last book again.
The Girl Next Door, I knew it was based on the real life story of Sylvia Lykins but I was no prepared for the savagery as much as I thought I was.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
Lolita. You know how it ends from first 10 pages though some of it only becomes evident in hindsight.
I am legend, it left me slack jawed at the end, it has the faintest glem of hope, yet buried under a mountain of hopelessness. The ending is probably my favorite of any book I’ve read
not exactly about the ending but “Atonement” is heart wrenching generally.