Are you looking for a good tear jerker? A book that will make you cry like a baby but remind you that there’s beauty in the world even if it’s sad sometimes? Here’s a list of books known to make readers break down. I tried to add some lesser known books to the list but I realized I haven’t actually been brought to tears by that many books. Please recommend me some more in the comments!
Please be warned that since most sad books make us cry at the ending this list will have some spoilers.
List is presented in alphabetical order and will be added to as I shed more tears.
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Bridge to Terabithia
author Katherine Paterson
When most readers think of books that made them cry this YA staple comes to mind. I read this novella way back in elementary school and it is just as impactful today. The story follows two outcast children as they find solace in each other. They use a rope swing to cross a river into a fantasy world they call Terabithia. Here they are able to escape their bullies and other troubles and life feels good for a few hours.
The book ends in tragedy when one of the protagonists travels to Terabithia alone. The rope snaps and they die, leaving their best friend to grieve in isolation. This book has been banned and praised in equal measure. Like it or not, children can experience loss too, it’s good for them to learn about it early.
The Fault in Our Stars
author John Green
For some reason, many tear jerkers are young or early adult books. The Fault in Our Stars is for all audiences but definitely skews younger. The two young love birds who star in this book meet at a cancer kids support group. Hazel is terminal, Augustus is recovering. Despite her death sentence they fall in love and vow to spend her final months together. Love does not need to be over the course of years, it is not bound by time. However, knowing there is an end date soon does not make it any less devastating when it happens.
The House Plant
Not all sad books end in full tragedy. Some are more melancholy, bittersweet, or so downright joyful that you just have to release the emotion somehow. This short story packs as much emotion into 30 pages as any of the longer books presented here. It’s about an unwanted house plant that is brought into the home of a lonely woman. She cares for it, talks to it, nurses it to health. So what can it do when it’s owner experiences her own health emergency?
Just as love does not understand time, love does not care if you are human, animal, plant, or mineral. There are many different kinds of love and they’re all important and impactful. This lovely story will make you appreciate all that your plants do for you behind the scenes. Now, go water them.
If I Stay
author Gayle Forman
Many of these books that will make you cry have been adapted into movies as well. There is certainly a market for these emotion filled narratives. If I Stay is liberal with the emotional gut punches as it follows a young girl who just experienced a car accident with her family. She has a prolonged out of body experience and needs to decide which would be better for everyone, to fight to survive or to let her life go. It’s an interesting premise that works mostly through flashbacks. It may have you thinking about your own impact on the people around you.
I Kill Giants
Another young adult book turned film adaptation, this graphic novel deals with the consequences of escapism when faced with hardships we don’t think we can handle. Barbara longs to kill giants, she wants to be a hero and slay the monsters destroying her world. As the book unfolds we see that her fantasy world is a coping mechanism to escape her true sorrows.
She is a troubled child and needs more help than she is willing to accept. In the end, she is able to face her personal monsters and learn how to accept the tragedies that life throws at us. This book is packed with genuine emotion that you’ll want to return to time and again.
I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
I know many people looking for books to make them cry are only searching for novels but I urge everyone to read more comic books and manga. This completed manga series has one of the most unique storylines of this whole list. What starts as a classic sick kids in love story takes a turn at about the halfway point. The surprise makes the emotions hit like a bullet.
A side note, although the title seems very strange to Westerners it is not off putting in the original Japanese. Idioms such as I Want to Eat Your Pancreas are ways of saying that you love someone so much you’d do something abnormal and maybe even disgusting for them. We should all be so lucky as to have that kind of love in our lives.
Locke and Key
This entry into books that will make you cry might just be a me thing. Sometimes books personally relate to one reader more than another. I hope that this graphic novel series resonates with a few of you as well. I completely fell in love with the characters on these pages and found myself just so darn happy for them when things went well that I was brimming with emotion. Then came a serious underdog moment when a sweet but misunderstood boy chooses to become a martyr and I absolutely lost it.
The book as a whole isn’t exactly sad but it contains many emotional moments that might connect with certain readers who have experienced profound grief.
The Lovely Bones
author Alice Sebold
Similar to If I Stay, The Lovely Bones follows a young girl experiencing a sort of out of body experience. However, in this novel she has been murdered and is trying to help her family from her position in the afterlife. She must face the damage that her death brings upon her family and the struggle to mend their heartbreak when she can’t be there and they can’t be aware of her presence. Many of these books make us face our own mortality, our relationships with others, and how we can try to make anything in the world just a little bit better.
A Man Called Ove
The main reason that a book will make you cry is that you fall in love with the characters and feel deeply for them. A Man Called Ove, now with an American remake movie titled A Man Called Otto, gets you to want to hug an old curmudgeon just like he’s your own grandfather. He’s depressed and seems purely grumpy to most observers but the novel lets us discover his mushy center until we can’t help but love him. Although almost overly sappy you’ll be likely to give in to the feel good tears that flow from this story.
Still Alice
author Lisa Genova
Still Alice is not like the YA books on the list. It deals with the unfortunate effects of getting older as it focuses on Alice after her diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer’s. She knows that at a certain point her life will become a burden to her loved ones but she’ll be too lost to help them at all. She’s terrified of her fate and lays out a plan to bow out before it gets too far.
Anyone who has dealt with a family member in cognitive decline will be hit especially hard by the tragedy of this illness. This highly personal exploration of what it’s like to be trapped inside a deteriorating mind will surely dredge up a lot of emotions for any reader.
The Sun is Also a Star
I didn’t expect to cry at The Sun is Also a Star (the book, not the movie, that adaptation lacks the magic). But sometimes a good old fashioned soulmate romance hits you right in the feels. The key to feeling extreme sadness and joy from these pages lies in the character building. Even side characters who seemingly have nothing to do with the main story. It’s all about fate and that totally cliched “meant to be” attitude but author Yoon just makes it work.
They Both Die at the End
Many of these books tell us right up front how they’ll end and why we’ll cry. They Both Die at the End puts it right in the title. Knowing that does not make the sadness any less meaningful. Throughout the whole book I kept hoping the title was a lie because I wanted nothing more than for the two leads to get a happily ever after. Although this book had me sobbing it was worth the heartbreak to spend a day with two young men on their last.
Please share this list with anyone you know that enjoys a good cathartic cry!
great list!! oh, the memories of being in middle school and getting utterly destroyed by the end of the fault in our stars…simpler times