Next Read ClubBooks That Will Make You Cry
Crying at a book isn't a warning label. These are the ones that earn it honestly, not with a cheap gut-punch ending.
There's a difference between a book that manipulates you into crying and a book that earns it.
The second kind spends 300 pages making you care about someone specific, and then lets something happen to them that feels inevitable rather than cheap. These are the ones we think earn it.
Quiet devastation
1.
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
A dystopia so understated you almost don't notice how dark it is — until the ending lands all at once.
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2.
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
One of the gentlest narrators in fiction, which somehow makes it worse.
Explore this book →Grief and memoir
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
3.
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
A neurosurgeon's memoir written while dying of cancer, about what makes a life meaningful. Not an easy read, but an honest one.
4.
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman
You will laugh through most of it, and then it will get you anyway, often on the same page.
Explore this book →Love stories that don't take the easy way out
5.
Me Before You
Jojo Moyes
A love story that refuses to give you the ending you're rooting for — and is more honest for it.
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6.
The Notebook
Nicholas Sparks
Keep tissues nearby. You've been warned, and it still won't be enough.
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7.
The Song of Achilles
Madeline Miller
You know how the myth ends before you start. It will still destroy you.
Explore this book →History and war
8.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini
Two women, decades of war, and a friendship that becomes the only thing worth surviving for.
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9.
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
One of those books that will genuinely wreck you, in a way that stays with you long after you finish it.
Explore this book →If you need a good cry
Sometimes a good cry is exactly what a book is for. None of these are sad for the sake of it — they're sad because they made you care first.
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