If you love reading, you're no stranger to the power of a good book. A well-told story can make you feel so many things — sadness or joy, frustration or delight, anxiety or calmness, and every emotion in between. So, I asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell me about the most emotionally charged books they've read. Here's what they said, along with some responses from book lovers on Reddit (and a few of my own opinions!).
1. "Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. It was the first book I openly sobbed at while reading in quite a while."
2. "Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley. It was funny, heartwarming, and devastating all at once. I ugly cried at multiple points, partly because Lily reminded me so much of my dog, and partly because the book is just so honestly and beautifully written."
3. "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. Three heart-wrenching stories of grief and loss within a family interwoven, with a mixed-media backdrop of images and changing text formats. The emotion of a young boy grieving his father’s death is at the heart of the story. The journey he goes on, and the stories of his family, show the small, beautiful things that can be found in the emotional aftermath of loss."
4. "The Green Mile by Stephen King. It just broke me. Then I watched the movie and bawled for days."
5. "In Love by Amy Bloom. If you want a good ugly cry, just pick up this book. Amy Bloom usually writes fiction, but this is a nonfiction account of accompanying her husband to Switzerland to end his own life after an Alzheimer's diagnosis. It's so well written, so raw and real and beautiful, and captures so many emotions. You also simply can't put it down, so be prepared to spend an entire afternoon reading."
6. "The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. This book is amazing. It was assigned reading for my high school English class almost 10 years ago, and I’ve still never forgotten it or the way it made me feel."
7. "The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini broke my heart into pieces. And his next novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, is heartbreaking from the very start. Both are must-reads."
8. "One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez. This is the book that opened my eyes to the mysterious, unexplainable supernatural world we live in. Ditch the jaded eye and embrace the wonder."
9. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. This book had me frozen in place as all the pieces came together."
10. "Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes absolutely wrecked me when I read it. Charlie, blissfully ignorant of his mental abilities, is happy at the start. Then, as his intelligence increases, so does his self-awareness. At the end, he loses the intelligence but is aware of what he is missing. It is just absolutely heartbreaking."
11. "Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. This book is beautiful but heartbreaking."
12. "A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. Even today, years after reading this, I can't think about it without wanting to cry. I've never read another book that captured grief and loss so brilliantly. It's painful and beautiful and still hits home. The book made me feel seen over my complicated feelings toward my mother's illness."
13. "The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. It's the only book that has made me cry. I read it as a teen and wasn’t prepared for the amount of sadness it holds. It is and has always been one of my favorite books."
14. "The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. I picked this up thinking it was a how-to manual for sports car racers only to discover it's an emotional story of grief and love for an extraordinary dog, complete with an ending that brought me to tears."
15. "The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. It's a first-hand account of the suffering that the author, her family, and friends endured at the hands of the Nazis in WWII. I’ve read it 13 times over my 59 years. It never fails to bring me to tears."
16. "A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It's about a character who has endured such cruelty that all the love and acceptance still can't mend him."
17. "Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan. I read it in one sitting in one day. I cried at the end."
18. "Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. I was in sixth grade when I read it, and it's the first book that ever made me cry. I never knew a book could make you feel such strong emotions until I read this one."
19. "The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I read it on a plane and sobbed the entire way through. The people next to me were extremely concerned."
20. "The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I still haven’t come across another book that comes even close to this beautifully melancholy story."
21. "The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I just finished it for the first time two weeks ago, and I’m still coming down from a book hangover. Part of me already knows my life is probably a 'before and after I read this book' scenario now. It was just so beautiful."
22. "The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read it before having children. I’m curiously dreading a reread now that I have sons. It’s such a beautiful work about the bleakest of possible situations."
23. "We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman. This book was a literal whirlwind of emotions. Newman's writing had me crying and then cracking up, often on the very same page. It's the story of two childhood best friends, one of whom is diagnosed with terminal cancer. You may be wondering how I could be laughing at a book with this sort of plot, but that's the magic of Newman's prose. This novel reads like nonfiction and truly plays on every emotion."
24. "Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. It's a historical fiction about a set of characters on a day in NYC in the '70s when a French stuntman did an unauthorized tightrope walk between the twin towers. Colum inhabits each character so fully and weaves all their stories together so beautifully. There is one chapter where I was crying so hard; the pages are warped because of all the tears. I've read it again and again and highly recommend it."
25. "Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. That book ruined me. I stayed an hour after closing at my job to finish it and showed up to dinner with red swollen eyes from crying so hard. Cried just as hard for the other two books in the series."
26. "The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. I cried so much while reading that book. It gave two different perspectives during WWII, and it really made you think about what you would do in that situation. I don’t think I would be able to handle any of their situations as well as they did. Honestly, anything by Kristin Hannah is amazing, but this one had me emotionally devastated days afterward."
27. "A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron was an emotional roller coaster for me, and I was ugly crying at the end."
28. "When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. I would say I have a pretty high tolerance for devastating books, but I had to put this one down a few times and pick it back up later. It's a nonfiction story (published posthumously) written by a neurosurgeon as he faces terminal lung cancer. It's seriously powerful, and I found myself covered in goosebumps while reading and rereading many passages."
29. "The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. She takes a line from the Bible about Jacob's only daughter and turns it into a beautiful story about women and the sisterhood. I ugly cry every time I read it. It's heartfelt and beautiful."
Add to the list! What's a book that really played on your emotions and made you feel something powerful? Tell us in the comments or drop it into the Google form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.