Someone asked: “I want a book that will make me cry.”
Books that will make you cry.
A good cry is one of the best things a book can give you. These are sad in the way that leaves you fuller, not emptier. Keep tissues nearby and something light for afterwards.
Contains affiliate links. How it works
A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara · 2008
Four friends in New York and one of them carrying something unbearable. Long, relentless and impossible to forget. Only when you're ready.
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro · 2005
It starts as a boarding-school story and slowly reveals what the school is for. The quietest heartbreak in modern fiction.
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak · 1998
Nazi Germany narrated by Death, who turns out to be gentle. A girl, a stolen book and an accordion. You will cry at the end.
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini · 2003
Two boys in Kabul, one betrayal and a whole life spent trying to make it right. Big, sweeping and very hard to put down.
Hamnet
Maggie O'Farrell · 2020
Shakespeare's wife and the death of their son. Written with such tenderness that the grief feels like your own.
Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes · 1966
A man becomes a genius through an experiment, and tells you what happens next in his own words. The last page is famous for a reason.
The Road
Cormac McCarthy · 2006
A father and son walk through a burnt world. Spare, terrifying and, in the end, about love more than anything.
The Fault in Our Stars
John Green · 2010
Two teenagers with cancer fall in love and make jokes about it. Sharp, funny and absolutely devastating.
Not quite it?
Tell the bookseller what you've already read and what you're in the mood for. We'll narrow it down.