Especially for those who aren't all too prone to it like myself. Sometimes a book just hits you that hard.

For me it was 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. It's a true story so that's probably why. I don't think I've read fiction that hits as hard as reality for me.

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

I remember reading it when I was in high school and it hit on a personal level.

"Gideon the Ninth" by Tamsyn Muir. I initially picked up the book because it mentioned lesbian space necromancers and was intrigued. OMG DID I GET ATTACHED TO THESE CHARACTERS THOUGH!

I'm speechless at lesbian space necromancers 😭

I more often simply get bored or my adhd won't let me sit still enough to really get into a book. The worst part is I do enjoy reading it just isn't sufficiently stimulating. I need to get more audiobooks. I do enjoy a good story that rips my soul apart though whether its anime, comic or book. Definitely isn't often I cry however even if it strikes my soul. Some things in Tuesdays with Morrie hit on a very personal level though.

i used to cry a LOT before i started t lmao so the honest answer to this question is A Lot Of Them.

however i want to give a special shoutout to stephen king's Lisey's Story for being one of my favorite books of all time and a book that means a lot to me. ugly cried at the last part of it. big cw for abuse though but. WHAT a book.

A lot of Stephen King books require some kind of CW tbf.

Oh god, that book ruined me.

...But all I could think of was Of Mice and Men. I read it in middle school. Twenty years later I still think about it and get sad.

All of Our Demise by Amanda Foody and C. L. Herman is the last book I remember crying over. It's been a while, I think I read it in 2022.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin -- many tears were shed by me.

The death of little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin made me cry. I remember my mom got really annoyed with me and told me I was being silly to cry over a book.

Don't you just love invalidating, emotionally repressive parents? That's not to say your mom is bad at all, but so often I feel like kids get shut down for expressing emotions. Especially over things adults find "trivial".

For multiple mixed reasons I just don't cry in front of people if it can be helped and taught myself to cry silently kinda early.

Its never silly to cry over something that touches you deeply though, cry when you need to cry.

Recently I got a little sniffly over the end of Black Water Sister by Zen Cho.

A while ago I tried to read The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory & Transformative Justice Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health (ed. Zena Sharman), which is a collection of essays on various topics relating to queer/trans/gender-nonconforming health. One of the pieces at the start of the book instructs you to picture yourself at different points in your life, and that managed to send me into an absolute breakdown. Not sure if that is credit to the book or my own poorly managed mental health at the time, but it was definitely a book that made me cry.

A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston

Some chapters had me sobbing! I don't usually cry much when reading, (music gets me a lot more though) but this book just hit me in the feels and hard.

Usually death in books annoy me, because I'm mad at the author for doing that to the reader, but there have been a few books that made me cry. I can only think of these two at the moment because it got to me so much.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness had me sobbing at the end, such an enjoyable yet horrifying and real book to experience, and a book very dear to me. I also love the combination of writing and illustrations at times.

Also The House of Hades by Rick Riordan hit me in the guts for personal reasons because of the loneliness of the character Nico reminded me too much of my own insane loneliness as a teen, and it was the first time I ever read about a character that came close to my experience as a kid. It took me a while to get past that chapter. For everything else it's not a sad book, it was just one of the few times a book really got me right where it hurt.

All The Little Animals, by Walker Hamilton.
I remembered reading it back in the 70s and recently ran across it again while cleaning my attic. It's a short little book, (only 144 pages) but it really packed in the emotions for me. My hubby laughed like a hyena at my tear and dust-streaked face when I came back downstairs.

Nona the Ninth, the third book in The Locked Tomb series! Specifically Paul's birth. It ruined me on a second read-through when I knew exactly what was going to happen. Great series, though!

Last One At The Party by Bethany Clift.

It's a post apocalyptic story - the main character is the sole survivor after a global pandemic and is confronting how she lived her life.

I don't really know why it hit me so hard - it was mostly her having to say goodbye to her loved ones, and some scenes of animal suffering that got to me. My husband read it and hated it so I have no idea if anyone else would react in the same way.

I think some people just don't like to read or consume negative types of media even if there's meaning behind it. Almost in a "what do I gain from reading this and making myself feel bad?" kind of way. Not everyone but I know some people like that. I can sympathize but I do enjoy stuff that pulls the strings of my emotions. Especially things that make me think. It almost feels like preparing myself for something I may feel in the future and I can be a little more ready than I would otherwise have been.

Yes, I do think it was perhaps a tough sell, especially after we've not long lived through a pandemic ourselves. People don't always want to be reminded of that.

I think what doesn't help is that the main character is really examining how she wished she lived her life differently. While I found that really interesting (and think all of us would have things like this we wish we'd done differently), I can see why hearing about it all made her hard to like. He was really willing for her to catch the disease and die.