Books That Made Me Cry the Hardest
- Briana Azar
- 1 minute ago
- 8 min read
I've had a rough time lately. If you're a regular reader of my book blog, you'll know that when times get tough, I turn to books. While my therapist suggested I read uplifting books to counteract my sorrow, my sister wondered if maybe I could lean into the melancholy and reach for stories that commune with these feelings.
It's the same desire people have to listen to emotional music when they themselves are emotional. It creates a sort of kinship between you and the artist or author --- they understand your pain. It can also be a way to let out these heavy emotions without solely focusing on just your own feelings, but perhaps a collective and universal grief. There might also be a longing to just feel something. At times, depression can feel like apathy and confusion can make you feel empty. There's something about a good, hard cry that cleanses your soul and makes you feel alive again.
So, here are the books that have made me cry the hardest --- in the most beautiful way possible.
I have written about my favorite Sarah Dessen novel, The Truth About Forever, many times on this website. And it has certainly made me cry more recently as a story that understands the grief of a girl losing her dad, and I empathize with it deeply now.
However, for many years, Dreamland was Dessen's novel that stuck with me because of how much it made me cry even though I didn't relate to the story personally. In it, Caitlin is a teenage girl who feels lost and untethered, especially since her older sister ran away from home. When she meets a boy named Rogerson, she is quickly sucked into his world, full of chaos and uncertainty.
Trigger warning, this book goes deeply into emotional and physical abuse. I know a lot of people point to Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us as a realistic depiction of domestic abuse, but I always feel that Dreamland is overlooked in its portrayal of the profound psychological toll of abuse.
I wanted to reach my hands through the pages to Caitlin, to shake her, hug her, tell her to stop. I felt horrified yet I could see why Caitlin made the choices she did, why she felt trapped, and it absolutely broke my heart. I bawled at the end of this book, which was tragic yet had a note of hope that has stuck with me for many years.
If someone were to come to me and say hey, Briana, I really want to get punched in the gut by my next read and sob like a baby, got any recs? This would be my pick, every time. I feel like out of every book I've ever read, this is the one that has made every single person who reads it cry, guaranteed.
Looking for Alaska is the story of Miles aka Pudge, as he searches for his Great Perhaps as a new student at a boarding school in Alabama. He befriends a small group of misfits, including the beautiful and mysterious Alaska Young, and is thrown into a world of pranks, cigarettes, and life contemplation. The exciting and poetic plot barrels towards an event that, once occurs, changes everything, and nothing was the same after.
This book will always have a special place in my heart. I read it at the prime age of 16, and I felt intoxicated by that feeling of youthful invincibility that Green writes about. The raw adolescent emotion is alive on every single page, and I was enthralled. It's also why I cried so hard at the end. The pain, the grief, the realization that life is fleeting yet precious, always hits me like a freight train. The last few pages, the feeling of hope despite the harrowing end, makes me sob the hardest. Green writes, "We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken." Somehow, that idea can be harder to hold onto the older I get but it still rings true, and rereading this book always reminds me that I will be okay.
I want to acknowledge that this book is imperfect. It is no doubt a product of its time, 1936, written by a white woman about the Civil War. And while there are parts that are problematic, I feel that it is an incredible character study of a woman surviving the Civil War, a narrative that is often overlooked.
Scarlett O'Hara might be one of the most infamous characters in fiction. She is spoiled, selfish, vain, charming, and at times, cruel. She is extremely unlikable. And yet, she is unforgettable. Her courage, determination, grit and resilience feel incredibly real and raw. She is able to keep going because she is so stubborn and proud. She convinces herself and those around her of her worth again and again. The Civil War completely destroyed her, her family, and her land, but she found a way to rebuild. Despite waves of misfortune that continue to hit her and her family even decades after the war, despite heavy grief that plagues her, despite absolute heartbreak, Scarlett somehow finds hope and has faith in the promise of tomorrow --- "After all, tomorrow is another day." That closing line and the lead up to it made me weep for hours after I finished. The emotional impact this book had on me is so strong and altering, all 959 pages of it, and I still believe in its value almost a century after its publication.
It's specifically the final book in The Hunger Games trilogy that is a tear jerker. While I have some issues with the plotting and pace of this book, and many have complained about how bleak it feels, the end made me sob into my mom's arms when I was 17 for reasons I couldn't exactly articulate at the time.
I'm sure many of you know the story and even the ending, whether through the books or the movies, but spoiler alert if you aren't aware. When Katniss loses her sister (and arguably her mind), and returns to a demolished and devastated District Twelve, it feels harrowing. How can she possibly rebuild life after everything she's been through? But it's that exact note of hopelessness that makes Peeta coming back so damn emotional. When Katniss needed strength, needed a reason to keep going, Peeta helped her find it. He was the soft hand that picked her off the ground. "That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that."
Oh, be still my heart. I can't believe these books are labeled young adult. The heavy themes of war and loss are written in a way that people of all ages can grasp and understand. But that whisper of hope at the end, that's what always gets me.
I have written about this book several times on my website. And every single time I write about it, I cry. I can't help it. I always wonder if this book would've hit me the same had I not read it when my dad was sick --- I'm not sure. I remember spending hours with him in the hospital as he received treatment, and at night, I would curl up with this book to help distract me from the suffocating sadness and anxiety I was feeling. Soon, I realized this book wasn't an escape, and instead, it pulled me back into reality --- reality of the world, of humanity, but especially, of my own personal life.
Green wrote this book in the middle of the pandemic, at a time when we all experienced collective anxiety and wariness. It felt like we reexamined our lives, what's important to us, what really matters. Green writes about the mundane, like his love of Diet Dr. Pepper; the quirky, like the origin of the QWERTY keyboard; but also of humanity and what it means to feel hopeful despite grief and uncertainty.
There's one essay in particular I want to highlight. It's titled "Auld Lang Syne," the famous song that people sing on New Years Eve. If you Google it, you'll know it. Green chronicles a precious friendship with his mentor Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Amy had a particular fascination with Auld Lang Syne because it was sung by soldiers in the trenches of World War I one Christmas Eve. The soldiers ---- whether English, Scottish, Prussian or German --- put down their weapons for one night and gathered to play soccer, exchange souvenirs, and sing this song. They began to sing this tune but instead with the words, "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here."
Amy died of cancer in 2017, and Green reflects on why that song and story meant so much to her. He writes, "Although it's a profoundly nihilistic song written about the modernist hell of repetition, singing this song with Amy, I could always see the hope in it. It became a statement that we are here --- meaning that we are together, and not alone. And it's also a statement that we are, that we exist. And it's a statement that we are here, that a series of astonishing unlikelihoods has made us possible and here possible. We might never know why we are here, but we can still proclaim in hope that we are here. I don't think such hope is foolish or idealistic or misguided. We live in hope --- that life will get better, and more importantly, that it will go on, that love will survive even though we will not. And between now and then, we are here because we're here because we're here because we're here."
Every time I read those words, I cry. Those words have been burned into me, they are embedded in my soul. These words hold my heavy grief in gentle hands, they tell me it's okay to feel sad and scared and yet, still hopeful.
I want to hop in at the end here to address the very apparent theme that has emerged in this post. Clearly for me, books that make me cry aren't inherently just about sad things. In fact, I've read many books that were sad and depressing and sometimes, just straight trauma porn. Depending on the context, that usually does not make me cry. Sadness or trauma simply for shock and awe do not evoke deep emotion in me.
It is that hope despite the sadness and grief that always fucking gets me, even from a very young age. Every single book I mentioned has this theme. And maybe this post was a reminder to myself that hope is the thing that makes us feel alive, that demands our attention, that is the thing to write books about and to live for. It can be easy to forget, especially in the times when grief feels overwhelming and all consuming. But it's important and precious, and we all must fight our way back to hope.
If you feel alone in your hopelessness or ever want to talk books or life or grief, I am always just an email away --- brianasbookshelf@gmail.com
Happy reading, y'all.