16 Books You Read As A Kid That Were Actual Emotional Torture

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share their favorite sad childhood books. Here are their best responses:

1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

amazon.com

"The Lovely Bones fucked me up. Imagining what the girl went through and how her family must have felt, while also knowing that this stuff happens all the time, just destroyed me. There were moments when I had to shut the book and come back to it another time because it was so emotionally traumatizing. I had to tap out about ten minutes into the movie, too." —Allison Loeber, Facebook

Get it from Amazon for $9.03.

2. Lisa, Bright and Dark by John Neufeld

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"I have dealt with depression and anxiety since I was very young and I felt this book totally captured the narrative of mental illness in an adolescent girl. Lisa spirals down the rabbit hole that is mental illness and the people around her don't believe her in the beginning.

It isn't until she gets to a point of no return that everyone believes that there was something wrong. That has always been my biggest fear and almost what happened to me. So every time I read that book I cry and remember how far I have come from the 13 year-old girl who first read it." —GabbyWells

Get it from Amazon for $5.99.

3. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr

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"Read this in the fifth grade and never forgot it. This is the true story of a girl who was a baby when the atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. She develops leukemia 10 years later and tries to fold a thousand paper cranes to get her wish to survive granted." —Lovely Liza, Facebook

Get it from Amazon for $3.93.

4. Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan

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"It hit a little too close to home. When I read this, my dog was very sick and even though I didn't want to think about it, I knew his time was coming. Reading about Marley dying made me think about what that kind of loss would be like for me. I cried my eyes out and never got around to finishing the book because of how sad it made me." —m473d710ac

Get it from Amazon for $7.97.

5. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

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"My favorite line from that book is, 'Here is a small fact: you are going to die.' It's such a poignant moment, especially coming from Death himself after all he recounts to the audience throughout the book. I was genuinely in tears when I realized it was all over." —mattyh49979475f

Get it from Amazon for $9.86.

6. The Jewish Dog by Asher Kravitz

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"This is the story of a dog born to a Jewish family, and follows its life events throughout World War II as it moves from Jewish to Nazi hands. This book made me connect with my religion and dog <3." —a495cc9f37

Get it from Amazon for $15.15.

7. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

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"This is about a young boy coming to grips with his mother's terminal cancer through visits from a monster who helps him accept the truth of his situation. It's also an excellent movie." –Emily Staines, Facebook

Get it from Amazon for $9.19.

8. Petey by Ben Mikaelsen

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"Petey is born with cerebral palsy in the 1920s and sent to live in a psychiatric hospital that abuses him. He is treated as mentally disabled even though he is only physically disabled. He befriends another patient, Calvin, but they get separated and from that point on Petey decides to never have friends again because losing them is too painful. This book is heart wrenching." —Kimberly Dettke, Facebook

Get it from Amazon for $6.99.

9. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

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"Reading the part where Sal reads her grandfather's letter telling her that her grandmother died left me heartbroken. I prided myself on not being super emotional as a kid but damn that got to me." —Morgo Leigh, Facebook

Get it from Amazon for $6.

10. The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells

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"This book had me soooobbing. When the protagonist's husband dies and her best friend gets in the shower fully clothed with her because she is too overcome with grief to even wash herself! It's just one of the saddest/sweetest things I have ever read." —Lisa Marie Garcia, Facebook

Get it from Amazon for $9.94.

11. Slob by Ellen Potter

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"Depicted my feelings as an overweight kid and how I felt then." —Midna1432

Get it from Amazon for $10.30.

12. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

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"I saw so much of myself in that book. When everyone turns on Stargirl and she starts to change to be seen as normal, it honestly broke my heart." —asiab4977d3791

Get it from Amazon for $6.44.

13. The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages

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"It's about a young girl whose father is a scientist working on the Manhattan Project (the people who invented the atomic bomb). The war ends and her dad goes to DC and gets hit by car of drunk soldiers and dies leaving her an orphan.

She later goes and visits the atomic testing sight where the sand of the desert has been turned into glass. At some point she realizes the horrific thing her father has helped to make and can't even reconcile that with him because he's dead. It's very sad." —leahb4090e9336

Get it from Amazon for $7.49.

14. Son of The Revolution by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro

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"Not a novel nor a children's book, but I think this was the first book that really made me cry as a kid. The whole book is devastating (it's an account of Heng growing up during Mao's revolution from childhood to a young adult) but the part that really killed me is when Heng and Shapiro visit the ramshackle home of Heng's father and (I believe) step-mother, and Heng notes how they have covered the walls in newspaper in an effort to hide their poverty.

It was one of the first times as a kid that I thought about my parents growing old and fragile, and it *destroyed* me!" —dcby

Get it from Amazon for $12.42.

15. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

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"Such a sweet book of sisters growing into women together. Whether they were apart or living with each other, the love and bond they shared was touching. And when one of the sisters died, I could not stop sobbing." —yasminep4d2aee37b

Get it from Amazon for $11.99.

16. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

amazon.com

"One afternoon, in the car on the way to my sister's swimming lesson, I had my nose in the fifth book of the series By the Shores of Silver Lake. My mom glanced in the rearview mirror to check on me, and asked, "Honey, are you ok? Are you going to be sick? Do you need me to pull over?" I was sobbing. Jack, Laura's beloved brindle bulldog, had died in the book, and it had broken my tiny little heart. That was just the first of many times a book deeply affected me. Yay books!" —NorthWolfe

Get the 9-volume set from Amazon for $37.99.

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