Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
⍣ books that will emotionally destroy you ⍣
23
items Warning: these won’t just make you cry; they’ll leave you hollow. Read them only if you’re ready to sit in silence for hours, staring at a wall, questioning everything you thought you knew about love, loss, and life. They’ll break you, twist you, and...
Sections
2
non-romance
quite a romance
non-romance
Devastating stories about life, family, and the world.
eight hundred pages that prove the most dangerous thing you can offer a person is kindness they don’t believe they deserve.
the undisputed heavyweight champion of emotional trauma for me. I don’t think I’ll ever truly recover from this one; it’s a b...
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
A heartbreaking look at the tragedy of gaining the whole world, only to understand exactly what it feels like to lose it.
this is a very beautiful book. It starts simply, almost innocently, and before you realize it, you’re emotionally invested in C...
Flowers For Algernon a book by Daniel Keyes
A story about the high price of silence and the long, jagged road toward a "way to be good again."
this book absolutely destroyed me. I bawled my eyes out, had to put the book down, and just sit there because the pain was too much.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
watching what Mariam and Laila endured made me feel angry, helpless, and devastated all at once.
it turns out that a thousand suns provide very little warmth when the world is committed to keeping you in the shadows.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
because nothing hurts quite like a narrator who happens to be Death.
The Book Thief
I wasn’t prepared for how deeply I would love Old Dan and Little Ann, or how completely their bond with Billy would crawl under my skin.
A masterclass in how a childhood dream can grow into a grief you never quite outrun.
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
These characters try so hard to survive with dignity, and life just keeps taking from them. Every bit of hope feels fragile, temporary, and cruelly earned.
Proof that the only thing more fragile than a human life is the "balance" we pretend to main...
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
What do you do with a soul when the world has already decided you’re just a collection of spare parts?
Never Let Me Go
Because sometimes it takes a creature who can’t speak to explain exactly what it means to be human.
The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel
A letter written to a mother who cannot read—because some truths are only safe to tell if they are never heard.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel
A reminder that the "Big Things" like history and law are nothing compared to the small, secret ways we break each other’s hearts.
It's a gorgeous, relentless tragedy about the laws of who should be loved, and how much.
The God of Small Things: A Novel
It’s about two people who are both 'right' in their own way, fighting over a house, and watching their desperation escalate into something irreversible. It left me feeling sick with grief because it feels so terrifyingly real.
A tragedy where no one...
House Of Sand And Fog
A story about a family drowning in the silence of everything they were too afraid to say out loud.
It explores the weight of parental expectations and the quiet ways we fail the people we love most. I spent the last fifty pages just crying for the c...
Everything I Never Told You: A Novel
Love is the only thing left when the world is literally turning to ash beneath your feet. It’s a horror story, but the monster is despair.
The father’s tireless devotion and the child’s innocence make the story unbearable and beautiful at the same t...
The Road: Pulitzer Prize Winner
A perfect summer, a perfect family, and a truth so sharp it’ll make you wish you’d stayed in the dark.
We Were Liars
quite a romance
Love stories that is destined to break your heart.
Not a romance, but a haunting. It’s what happens when two people are so toxic they’d rather burn the moors down than live without each other.
Wuthering Heights a book by Emily Bronte, Pauline Nestor, Lucasta Miller ...
It’s a dangerous thing, reading someone else’s mail—especially when the truth inside is the only thing left to burn.
The Last Letter - Rebecca Yarros
One moment of misguided virtue, one lie from a child, and a lifetime spent trying to write a version of history where no one bled.
Atonement: A Novel
A quiet confession that the most intense relationship of your life might be with a person you barely knew.
Madonna in a Fur Coat - Sabahattin Ali
for anyone who has ever felt like a dreamer in a world of reality, the ending of this story is a cold, sharp reminder of how lonely the morning can be.
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A romance that proves "together" is a relative term when your husband is a ghost in his own timeline.
The Time Traveler's Wife
I knew how it ended and yet I still found myself gasping for air by the final page. It’s a shimmering, golden tragedy that makes you fall in love just to watch the sun set forever.
The Song of Achilles: A Novel
A story for anyone who needs to be reminded that "forever" is usually just a polite way of saying "until it hurts too much."
A Thousand Boy Kisses by Tillie Cole