The Last Book That Made Us Cry
We asked team TNB to tell us the last book that made them cry - because who doesn’t love a story that will leave them sobbing? (Just us? Oh…)
Below are the recommendations from each of our book sellers!
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I got in trouble for this before, but I have to do it once more. The last book to make me cry was the final book in the Ravenhood Series, “The Finish Line.” The series is a coming-of-age dark romance about a girl who falls in love with three “brothers,” all of whom are trying to change the world for the better, using force and theft. The Finish Line is the culmination, told from a different POV, which helps us understand more of the “whys” and “hows” on how this group formed. The entire series is beautiful and devastating, but this book made me sob because it broke my heart and then mended it.
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This entire book punches you in the face with the darkest aspects of society - in particular, the prison industrial complex. Throughout the entire story you gain heartbreaking glimpses into trauma and violence, but it wasn’t until the final sentence of the book that the tears flowed for me. And I was not just crying at the final scene - I was finally crying for all of the hurt that the characters experience throughout the entire book. This was a stunning novel, and will easily be one of my top reads for 2026.
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Crying in H Mart is a beautiful and complex story of belonging and grief. It will absolutely have you in tears.
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This book is heart-wrenching and brutal at times but was amazing. It reveals what happens when we go through trauma, especially early on in life. In it poetry is magic, knowledge and literacy is hoarded and forbidden to women, whose only purpose is to reproduce. This fantasy book hits differently.
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Marcellus is an pacific octopus who is smarter than a human could ever dream of. He makes it his mission to uncover a mystery an older woman deserves to know. As he ages we read how strong tenacity can be, remarkably exemplified by Marcellus.
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The Reformatory is as haunting as it sounds. In this book that is both historical fiction and horror set in the Jim Crow south, we learn what it means to survive. This story is beautiful and tragic and it devastated me. Though the story of this book is fiction, the stories that inspired it are real. And they are heartbreaking. The tears I shed were not just for these fictional characters’ stories, but also for the real stories that were never told.
Grab your copy here.
Need other recommendations? Ask me for some ideas!