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Books About People with Way Bigger Problems than Your Love Life
22 items
By
Bella Smith ⭐
Perspective is everything. Read these, and I guarantee your heartbreak will feel like a minor plot twist instead of the end of the world.
4
A Holocaust survivor explains how finding purpose helps people survive even the worst suffering. Your situationship doesn’t compare.
Man’s Search for Meaning
A girl in Nazi Germany steals books to survive while death itself narrates the story. Perspective, right?
The Book Thief
Suddenly, being ghosted doesn’t feel like the end of the world.
The Boy From Block 66
A free Black man gets kidnapped and sold into slavery. You might feel trapped in your emotions, but this is actual captivity.
12 Years a Slave
A teenage girl hides from the Nazis and still manages to believe in love and humanity. You can survive blocking someone.
The Diary of a Young Girl
A woman raised without formal education escapes an abusive home and teaches herself into Cambridge. That’s real resilience.
Educated
A girl gets shot by the Taliban for wanting an education. You can get over someone not liking your Instagram post.
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Shot for Going to School
A love story inside a concentration camp. If people can love there, you can find love again anywhere.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz
A doctor is diagnosed with terminal cancer and writes about facing death. Your heartbreak? Temporary
When Breath Becomes Air by Kalanithi & Verghese
A former child soldier recounts his terrifying experiences. Your “suffering” isn’t quite on the same level.
Long Way Gone
Survivors describe the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Your emotional fallout? Not as bad as an actual nuclear explosion.
Hiroshima
A girl grows up in extreme poverty with unpredictable, unstable parents. Imagine if your childhood trauma had bonus starvation.
The Glass Castle
A miserable Irish childhood with neglect, hunger, and death—yet it’s still funny. You’ll appreciate your comfortable misery.
Angela's Ashes
Abuse, racism, heartbreak, and still finding hope. You’re stronger than your situation.
The Color Purple
Friendship, betrayal, war, and guilt that lasts years. That person who ignored you for a week? Not the worst.
The Kite Runner
A boy survives horrific abuse from his own mother. If he can heal, so can you.
A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive
A father and son wander a post-apocalyptic wasteland, starving and fighting off cannibals. Your heartbreak isn’t that dramatic.
The Road
A teenage girl is sent to a Soviet labor camp in Siberia. You can handle the emotional cold.
Between Shades of Gray
An innocent boy befriends another inside a Nazi concentration camp. Their problems? Much worse than your latest text regret.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Escaping slavery, running for your life, and risking everything—your obsession is minor.
The Underground Railroad
Growing up in apartheid-era South Africa with a banned racial identity? Worse than dating someone who won’t commit.
Born a Crime: South African Childhood Stories
A journalist is kidnapped and held for ransom in Somalia for 15 months. That’s a real nightmare.
A House in the Sky
