For me, it was really unexpected:
There was a fantasy series written by David Gemmell called the Drenai Saga, and its first book was called “Legend.”
The main character was named Druss, and in the beginning of the book, his wife gets kidnapped by raiders. The rest of the plot arc involves him pursuing her to get her back. There are multiple times where the action or plot arc comes to a head and then rips your heart out, especially towards the end, where he first reunites with his beloved.
It was the first time I remember, as an adult, not being able to put a book down, and feeling tears run down my face because I had come to care so deeply for all the characters.
How about you? I’d love to hear about your emotional moments I reading, no matter what they are.
by Tchamber5
19 Comments
This was probably not the first, but I cried tremendously through the last 50 pages of A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.
The Day the World Stopped Turning by Michael Morpurgo.
The ending absolutely floored me
Where The Red Fern Grows. Broke my heart as a kid
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.
The final book in Dark Tower series, when the ka-tet first breaks
I will never admit to crying but Chesapeake Bay series but Nora Roberts was an amazing series so sad the story
the math textbook-
I was about to say I don’t get emotional during reading/watching stories but then remembered in book… 3?4?5? of throne of glass I kind of had to swallow my tears. It wasn’t because of a death, it was just because the main character had someone who deeply cared about her and gave her a hug and I didn’t… I’m pathetic lol.
For me, it was the fourth book in the Wheel of Time series, Shadow Rising. It’s been a bit so some details might be wrong. SPOILERS:
>!One of the characters, Perrin hears word that his home village has been taken over by a faction of religious extremists, the Whitecloaks. He knows that they have his mother and his sister held prisoner so he sets off to his village to save them. His girlfriend wants to go with him to fight off the Whitecloaks but Perrin insists on going alone. Against his wishes, his girlfriend joins along with some warriors. He gets to the village and talks with the mayor in his home.!<
>!Perrin explains his plan to save his family, turning himself in to the Whitecloaks. That is why he wanted to go alone. The mayor then explains that the Whitecloaks already killed Perrin’s mother and sister. THE MOMENT WHEN HE FINDS OUT is what broke me. It’s almost like he ignores it, sort of shrugging it off and bringing up other pressing matters. He then remembers small details about his mother and his sister, those memories interjected between his thoughts and his talking. The way it’s written, I felt what Perrin felt, the disbelief. After more memories of his family floods his mind, he then finally cries. That is the fist time a book made me tear up. !<
Have you read the complete series? It’s great most of the time and the thing with Druss and his wife are taken up again.
I was three years old and my favorite book was a book called the mitten about a boy who falls through the ice and drowns when he’s going to get a mitten out on the frozen lake. And the book is all about death and grieving and how the town and his family reacted and the funeral.
Mum was studying child development when I was a toddler and in the 80s they were super into how to talk to children about death in a realistic, non traumatizing non religious way. So I had a lot of kids books about death 😂
But dumbo made me cry more. Dumbo made my little toddler heart break so hard that my mum had to give away the dumbo cassette tape and the book we had because I couldn’t handle it.
Charlotte’s Web.
Charlotte’s Web. That’s the first one I recall that made me cry. More than Little Women when (spoiler!)
Les Miserables. Maybe 20 times throughout the book.
1984 was one of my first books and made me cry the end of Winston, reminded me when i used to ignore happy moments and memories becouse they distracted me from work
Memoirs of a Geisha
There’s only one fiction book I can remember shedding a tear to and that was the last chapter of The Hidden Palace when >!Chava and Ahmad go their separate ways. Incredibly bittersweet.!<
A book I read as a kid where an animal dies—horse or dog. I read a lot of those. Maybe one of Marguerite Henry’s.
Sobbed like a baby at the end of One Day
Bridge to Terabithia. I freaked the hell out of my mom when I read it at around 9-10, since I ran into her bedroom wailing “She’s dead, she’s dead!” She was a lot more calm when I burst into her room a year or two later after I read Where the Red Fern Grows doing something similar.