Lately, I’ve been craving a book that will break my heart… and then put it back together again. It’s been so long since I read a romance that made me ugly cry that, honestly, I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Kristan Higgins’ women’s fiction has made me cry–I just reread If You Only Knew and, while doing so, used up a clutch of Kleenex. Circe made me cry but, again, not a traditional romance. The Time Traveler’s Wife destroyed me but, while it is a phenomenal love story, it is most certainly not a romance. I know I’ve read some in the past but my 58 year old brain is drawing a big fat blank.
So help me out, peeps. Hit me with some romance novels that wrecked you and, please, tell me why. You guys are the best!
I some ways “tearjearker romance” is a contradiction in terms. I would imagine that many AAR members will be old enough like me to have read Erich Segal’s “Love Story” or seen the film. For me, a romance that would make me cry would include the death of a baby or maybe a well-loved dog or cat. Otherwise, if I know in advance that it’s a tearjerker, I will probably avoid it altogether. I do read in other genres where I have cried, the latest was “Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy” by Serhii Plokhy. And I cried when I read “Berlin” by Antony Beevor. The insanity, violence, arrogance, sheer inhumanity portrayed in both of these books just made me feel helpless, very, very sad and angry as well. But the tears came from time to time at the tragedies portrayed. And I cried looking at various things on TV on the 27th of January – Holocaust Remembrance Day.
One of my favorite tearjerker romances is Lorraine Heath’s TEXAS GLORY. Both the hero and heroine are emotionally repressed to the point of being damaged by it, for good reasons, but they bring out the best in each other. I think that was what made me cry, seeing how much they cared for each other and struggled to show it. The tears were cathartic, in other words, rather than just painful.
Unlike elaine s, though, I can’t say that the death of a baby would definitely make me cry. If I was emotionally invested in the child, yes. I was devastated at Bonnie’s death in GONE WITH THE WIND, because I knew how much she meant to Rhett. But if I expect that the author will provide a replacement baby in the epilogue, that often undermines the emotional impact of the loss for me. So I tend to avoid romances if I know that the heroine has a miscarriage, though not because I don’t want to cry.
Great topic of discussion, by the way. I look forward to reading the replies.
[Possibly a duplicate post…sorry. I tried to post earlier and lost what I’d written. Naturally, I hadn’t saved it, so am recreating from memory.]
The first book that came to my mind was Kati Wilde’s GOING NOWHERE FAST, a “New Adult” romance that works even for people like me (who hasn’t been a “new” adult since Jimmy Carter was President). Wilde seamlessly blends elements of many tropes (antagonists-to-lovers, friend’s sibling, road trip, enforced proximity, even a Pride & Prejudice retelling) in this story of a young woman taking a camping trip through the Pacific Northwest with her roommate’s brother. There’s a vein of melancholy running through the book (the heroine’s father has recently died, the hero has yet to come to terms with the death of his parents years before) and it has absolutely the most gutting breakup scene I’ve ever read—it’s a long one that takes place over several days, and no matter how often I read it, I always cry.
Wilde has several other books that have crushing breakups, especially FAKING IT ALL. It’s the story of a woman who is paid to pretend to be a famous (married) actress. She falls for the man who is protecting her (he thinks she’s the married actress and the heroine can’t tell him the truth about who she really is). So much heartache. I also find Wilde’s SECRET SANTA hits my tear duct buttons—but that’s less because of any breakup and more because of the heroine’s hard-scrabble life.
Molly O’Keefe’s ONE LAST CHANCE is the story of a married couple who have been apart most of their ten-year marriage. It has an epic, sob-worthy reconciliation scene after the hero realizes the part he has played in the mess his marriage has become and the steps he must take to repair it. (O’Keefe’s more expanded WEDDING AT THE RIVERVIEW INN has a similar set-up and really puts the characters through the wringer.)
Kelly Hunter’s MAGGIE’S RUN, about a woman who attempts to turn a rundown sheep station in the Australian Outback into a destination wedding venue, is beautiful and melancholy. Maggie reconnects with a neighboring rancher—a man with whom she has a long, complicated history going back to their teens—but it is certainly not smooth sailing.
A. Zavarelli has been hit-or-miss for me, but her TAP LEFT is the gold standard for devastation. As she approaches her 30th birthday, the heroine resolves to get her life out of the rut it’s in. This includes joining a Tinder-like dating app called Tap Left and finally resolving the long, complicated, and unconsummated relationship she has with the brother of her long-dead teenage boyfriend. There’s a scene where the heroine goes to a coffee shop to meet the guy she’s been “talking to” on Tap Left that will absolutely wreck you.
Laura Florand’s SNOW-KISSED features a couple whose marriage broke down under the weight of the heroine’s miscarriages and subsequent descent into depression (for which she refused to get help). Then they find themselves stranded alone together in a snow-bound cabin. Incredibly sad, but ultimately uplifting.
And I know I’m an outlier with my love for Harlequin Presents—but almost any HP (especially one written by Caitlin Crews) will have at least one scene so sad you’ll be grabbing the Kleenex box.
It goes without saying that all of the above books, however much you might cry while reading them, have HEA/HFN endings. For this reason, I did not include Taylor Fitzpatrick’s THROWN OFF THE ICE, which will break your heart, but not put it back together (at least not in an HEA/HFN fashion). However, if you really want a love story that will devastate you, THROWN OFF THE ICE is a great choice.
I had forgotten about Snowkissed. That book gutted me.
“And I know I’m an outlier with my love for Harlequin Presents,..” Hey, nothing wrong with being an outlier! I’ve never read an HP myself, but I certainly have peculiar tastes when it comes to the wider romance community- at least based on what I’ve seen. I’m one of those odd people who is just as happy watching the charming movie “Miss Potter” as I am watching the X-rated “Midnight Cowboy.” Incidentally, “Midnight Cowboy” is actually quite tame by today’s standards, but talk about a sad movie and book! I don’t recall if I cried when I finished reading the novel, but I certainly felt sad for a while.
I’m not saying any of this to set myself apart. I’m bringing it up because I have found the community at AAR so welcoming when it comes to other genres and different tastes. Ms. Perera and I have gotten off on Quentin Tarantino tangents more than once on this board. What other forum is open to *that*?
Harlequin Presents often leave me with emotional whiplash, and I actually think that’s something the editors look for, even though there.’s a happy ending. Some Presents do this well, but others do it by withholding a fact the author knows until late in the book, without the plot scaffolding that makes the lack of disclosure seem natural until the reveal. Either way, it plays to some preference I have as a reader for catharsis without too much tragedy.
Lucy Gordon does it best for me, and the books I am citing here are pretty similar. I am very fond of a Silhouette Desire title, “A Fragile Beauty,” which unfortunately has not been reissues as an ebook as far as I know. My favorite is “Farrelli’s Wife,” despite the erratic poetry. The book was either a Harlequin Romance or a Presents in the U.S. Similarly, I like “His Brother’s Child.” Lynne Graham’s “The Veranchetti Marriage” is another title with a wrenching series of scenes before the resolution into a more equal and hopefully HEA.
Penny Jordan was also good at putting her heroines in emotionally harrowing circumstances that I often found affecting. “Substitute Lover” is one title I can think of. “Capable of Feeling” and “Lovers Touch” also were books I reread, although there was a certain suspension of skepticism necessary. I think storytelling that draws the reader along helps mute questions that may arise about the emotional blindness of the characters.
In addition, I am not particularly emotionally observant myself, which is a big assist to the author. For instance, I really got caught up in “Love’s Tangled Web,” an HP by Mary Lyons, which totally reveals my habit of reading first and thinking later. Sophie Weston’s “A Matter of Feeling,” “Executive Lady,” and “Yesterday’s Mirror” fall into this category for me, as does Doris Rangel’s “Legacy.” Other HP titles that are similar in my mind are Susan Napier’s “A Bewitching Compulsion” and “Secret Admirer,” notable for the twist with the male hero.
Carole Buck, who wrote for Second Chance at Love when I first started reading her, is someone I enjoy for her humor. But a couple of her Second Chance books, “The Real Thing” and “Swann’s Song,” have built-in twists that involved more emotional see-sawing for me. There’s also the Silhouette Intimate Moments title “Driven to Distraction” by Judith Duncan, who seems to do a good job with her minor characters, too.
Finally, the jerk-the-reader around HEA par excellence is, in my opinion, “Whitney, My Love.” Unfortunately, I discovered recently when I tried to reread it that Judith McNaught’s method for inducing the reader’s emotional reaction went too far for me now. Sure, I can believe the so-called hero did that, but now I think he has anger management issues. A reconciliation.? I want to show Whitney the advice columns Carolyn Hax writes and tell her, “OK, sweetie, you just sit down and read ‘The Gift of Fear’ like Carolyn says before you decide about going back to him.”
I’ve cried a lot while reading books, some with romances included.
TJ Klune’s Wolfsong for instance…. I also ended up reading Thrown Off the Ice and cried too.
Julia Quinn’s An Offer from a Gentleman, when it seems things won’t have a solution…
Still, the one I usually think of immediately is Lover Unbound by Ward. When I read that one, I had devoured the first four in a row, no time in between, it was finish one and start the other right away so I was pretty invested emotionally in the whole world and the characters.
I remember I read that book practically all the way through on a saturday and when it gets to the crying moment I sobbed, as if it was a real person I was mourning. It touched me really badly, I even felt like I couldn’t have energy for a mundane thing like dinner I was so sad! Then the author’s solution wasn’t the best one (to me, but I went along with it anyway) to mitigate things.
It really felt like it was unfair.
I probably wouldn’t react like that nowadays, were I to read it for the first time now.
The two books that sprang immediately to my mind are both by authors I haven’t read in years, not since their new releases began to irritate me beyond reason. But I’ve reread these two books and cried every time.
Lorraine Heath’s Always to Remember (still perfectly heartbreaking and lovely) and Mary Balogh’s The Secret Pearl (admittedly marred by the heroine’s trademark Balogh martyrdom but still a moving read).
Agree about The Secret Pearl – her best work, IMO, and a regular re-read.
I am going to read it next week!
The Secret Pearl is on sale right now for $3.99.
I bought it!
A couple of Lorraine Heath’s books have made me cry – The Earl Takes All was one and I think the novella in that series, When the Marquess Falls may have produced a tear or two.
Most recently though, I’ve blubbed at scenes in a couple of the books in Hailey Turner’s Metahumans series (Em will probably be able to tell which ones!) The books are futuristic romantic suspense, but the author can also pack quite the emotional punch; I was listening to the audio of book five the other night and trying to avoid sobbing into my dinner!
We’ve got a tag for this!
https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/tearjerker/
I’ll update with these great recs too.
I can’t think of an official romance novel that’s made me cry- probably because the HEA/HFN assures me the characters will be all right at the end.
Oddly enough, I have cried when writing certain challenging scenes in my own work even when I know I’m going to give the characters an HFN by the end of the story. I hope that’s not too off topic, but can any other writers here relate?
When I cry at romances, it’s because of secondary characters (like Carla Kelly’s The Lady’s Companion which is wonderful) or because the leads have gone through so much to be together/reach a point of happiness – that was Courtney Milan’s Unclaimed for me. Tears can come for a lot of intense, emotional reasons, not just sadness.
I find most of the “tear jerker” romances that really make me cry the hardest also often annoy me- because I also feel manipulated by the author. Usually the author makes the situation SO unfair or the heroine such a martyr and glutton for punishment I know I’m being emotionally wrangled into sobs.
Example: “A Precious Jewel” by Mary Balogh. I end up crying my eyes out over the heroine’s plight even though I also really want to shake her and her great “friend”. SPOILERS************** The heroine is upper class and well educated yet chooses to become not even a courtesan with a protector but a prostitute by the hour. The excuse for not getting a “respectable” job as a governess is because she didn’t have a good address to use while applying. Yet her former governess and great friend has a brothel she owns and surely could loan her rent for a month or two for a respectable lodging. No one thinks of that. She also has an inheritance coming but doesn’t think to borrow against it, Nope straight from a genteel upbringing to charging by the hour. Makes sense.
Example 2: “Walk Through Fire” by Kristen Ashley. SPOILERS**************
The heroine basically ruins her life and the life of the man who loves her unconditionally when she finds out she cannot give birth to children. This happens about twenty something years ago. She never tells the hero, lies to him and breaks up with him sending him into a self destructive period and herself into almost a catatonic state. All because she must “sacrifice” herself so he can have biological children someday with someone else. The hero hates her for leading him on and dumping him for a “fancier life” his whole motorcycle club who were her friends and loved her blames her, and her family who knows the truth and loved the hero also never bother to tell him. He goes on eventually to marry unhappily and divorce (but have kids). She spends the next 20 odd years like a nun mourning him and just working. Her believed sister who knows all just lets it happen. Of course when she tries to reconnect with the hero after 20 years when she learns he had kids and divorced, he treats her badly, his friends treat her badly and she basically just nails herself to a cross and suffers like the annoying martyr/saint/idiot that she is. Yet I will sit and read this book and bawl despite also wanting to fling it at the wall.
I tend to pull these tearjerker books out when I am feeling weepy and masochistic. Lol.
Traditional romances rarely ever move me to tears, despite some of them dealing with quite emotional subjects.
Most tear-jerkers for me come from other genres. If you like historical fiction with a romance in it, I remember being moved to tears by Helen Simonson’s The Summer Before the War. The death of a supporting character and its affect on nearly every character in the novel left me with a lump in my throat.
Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm would top my list.
Big fat ugly tears. Great book.
You may have already read these, but three books that come to mind are Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas; Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran; and The Duke & the Lady in Red by Lorraine Heath. All three books will bring you to tears.
Sherry Thomas’ book is a marriage of convenience/ friends-to-lovers story about a woman that has an actual career. The heroine knows what she’s getting into with marriage, but her heart is still broken for part of the story. Meredith Duran’s book is about a burned out spy who is reunited with the woman that once saved his life. The hero suffers what we now know to be PTSD and eventually learns how much the heroine suffered for helping him. Finally, Lorraine Heath’s book is heartbreaking for a secondary character. The heroine’s brother is disabled and Lorraine Heath does a wonderful job telling his story. The main characters are great too, but the brother’s plotline shines through and will reduce the reader to tears.
OMG, yes – the “honeymoon” in Ravishing the Heiress – you’ll probably know the scene I’m referring to – killed me!
That scene is so sad but it didn’t make me cry. Because it was in the past and we could see that the hero had turned out fine, it didn’t break my heart.
I would suggest that most of Sherry Thomas’ HRs could qualify for this category! She writes heartbreaking angst like no other!
The one novel that quickly came to mind when I read this query is Ravishing the Heiress (The Fitzhugh trilogy, #2), by Sherry Thomas. I love the trilogy and Millie’s story made me ache.
I ugly cried over Thrown Off the Ice, by Taylor Fitzpatrick. No other book has moved me so much. That ending. OMG.
Various books in the Metahuman, Green Creek, Seven of Spaded, and Hazard and Somerset series have brought me to tears, and more recently, listening to the two Mia Vincy books has had me wincing and nearly tearing up in key scenes. I love a book that puts me through the wringer though, so no complaints here!
But Thrown Off the Ice isn’t technically a romance, right?
I characterize THROWN OFF THE ICE as a love story but not a Capital-R-Romance. I can’t stress enough that it does not have an HEA/HFN—and so to my mind, not a Romance. But it’s such a touching love story and Taylor Fitzpatrick does a wonderful job of showing rather than telling. I loved it, it made me cry, and I must have read it five times since I read it the first time a month ago.
SPOILERS HERE!
Ok, so a couple of us have had this conversation in other places. But I have to say/argue this point again. I acknowledge TOTI wouldn’t fit most “romance publishers” genre definition of a romance BUT the MCs meet and fall in love and are together til “death do us part”. It’s a romance (IMHO) that allows us as readers to travel the whole road with them. So if you are specifically LOOKING for a tear jerker, by all means, it qualifies! It is a lovely story.
Last book that made me ugly cry was My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan. Would you categorize that as a romance? It has an ending that would certainly qualify as HFN. And I second your thoughts about The Time Traveler’s Wife. I’ve probably read/listened to that book a dozen times. It is a beautiful, gut-wrenching love story, but definitely NOT a romance!
A love story for the ages but not a romance. (I love the audio of this book but I have to pull over once while listening to it because I was crying so hard it was dangerous to drive!)
I’ve been teary at parts of certain books, but on the whole, “tearjerker” aren’t that appealing to me, as I tend to think of them as mawkish and overly sentimental, and probably as Chrisreader wrote above, manipulative. I think of films like Older Yeller or Terms of Endearment, which I don’t actually enjoy watching because they seem explicitly designed to provoke crying. I looked at AAR’s list of tearjerkers and was surprised to see Kate Clayborn’s Best of Luck and Jo Bourne’s The Blackhawk listed because although they had some sad moments, my overwhelming impression isn’t one sadness. On the other hand, Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Dream a Little Dream does stand out to me as a classic tearjerker because the entire story is mired in pathos as one catastrophe after another befalls the heroine. Sherry Thomas’s tearjerkers like Ravishing the Heiress and My Beautiful Enemy likewise are too bleak for me didn’t leave me with much joy by the end. His at Night though has some teary moments but without submerging the story in sadness.
The last romance that made me teary is Mariana Zapata’s Luna and the Lie. The hero crosses a line and inexcusably hurts the heroine, and her speech to him where she explains what she expects from a loving relationship made me cry.
I think you and I are on the same wavelength- SEP’s “Dream a Little Dream” is another title I use as an example of emotional manipulation that still makes me cry. It’s almost torture porn it’s so bad in parts. Some stories become crazily convoluted to put their heroines (in particular) in the worst situations, usually as the result of a series of bad decisions.
And I agree about The Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne. While there were sad moments, I look on the novel on the whole as a joyful experience. It’s so uplifting and perfect when Adrian and Justine finally get things right and they had so many great moments through the years. It also all makes sense as it’s driven by the characters and the relative situations they find themselves in, it’s not just one calamity after another ladled on top of the next.
I find Carla Kelly is another author who can mix some bitter with the sweet yet leave me feeling hopeful and uplifted rather than depressed,
I am such a technical reader, even with romance that I will read a real emotional scene and few scenes later, I think back ….”Oh! that was so sad.” I am notorious for delayed reactions but overall I avoid the tear jerkers.
This is a trope I tend to avoid, though books do make me cry sometimes. I still weep when I read To Kill a Mockingbird, which I have read at least 30 times in my life. But I don’t read romance In order to cry, I read it to make me feel good.
The first title that came to my mind is Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman. Most people categorize the book as historical fiction, because it is based on real people (Llewellyn the Great of Wales and England’s King John’s (the magna carta signer) illegitimate daughter, Penman kept to historically accurate details but created a fully realized Joanna. It’s a story that begins with her being married off by her father for political expediency and covers several decades of her marriage. It’s a fabulous read, and a wonderful romance. But you WILL cry at points.
And I second Flowers From The Storm by Kinsale as well.
I’ll check out Here Be Dragons. Thanks!
I love Sharon Penman. She writes historical fiction rather than romance, although some of her books do have romantic elements to them. Her Sunne in Splendour is still the best fictional account of Richard III I’ve ever read and is possibly my favourite HF ever.
As a reader who preferentially looks for romances with humor, I can’t think of any tearjerkers I would call a favorite. I mostly avoid them if I have advance warning, and rarely reread them. The one story that comes to mind that I’ve read more than once and cried every time is Promises to Keep by Victoria Alexander, which I read in the anthology The Night Before Christmas (though I think it is also in another anthology).
I don’t often cry over books but I can think of two scenes that made me tear up. One is the recognition scene in Meredith Duran’s Duke of Shadows, when he discovers that she didn’t die during the Mutiny. The other is the prologue to Loretta Chase’s The Last Hellion, which makes it impossible to think of the hero as a dumb oaf no matter how much he tries to behave like one.
I adore that scene from The Duke of Shadows. His shock and hurt are so visceral.
Checked a few reviews on this one as I didn’t know it and have just got it on my kindle as I do love stories set in India and the book looks very promising.
I hope you like it. I can’t say enough wonderful things about it.
co-sign!
The Sound of Glass by Karen White, this book is more fiction/mystery with a little romance, but it was wonderful and made me cry.
Finally thought of one…In Mary Balogh’s Slightly series when Lord Alleyne (thought dead) returned to his siblings. I cried fat, happy tears!
And the description of Wulfric’s face at that moment in a later book.
The first book that came to mind is Cry No More by Linda Howard. I read it years ago, but remember it packing a big emotional wallop.
As a mom, I had a hard time getting through that one. I remember thinking that the ending was one I wasn’t sure I could believe in because I wasn’t sure I could have recovered from the tragedy. Now, I think I probably could, but when my kids were small, it seemed insurmountable.
Cry No More is perhaps my favorite of Howard’s books but I think of it as an emotional read rather than a tearjerker. It’s focus is on recovery and moving forward in life in the face of traged,y and largely it doesn’t ask readers to spend inordinate amounts of time wallowing in sadness despite some one particularly sad topic. The book does have some weird fated-mates themes going on at times, but otherwise, Milla might be my favorite of Howard’s heroines.
I’ve ugly cried many books, some mentioned above, but one that always sticks out for me that has not been mentioned is The Silver LIning by Maggie Osbourne. The heroine is called Low Down – a ragged prospector in a camp of all men. She nurses the camp back to health after they are all afflicted with the pox and as compensation they say she can choose whatever she wants. She says she wants a baby and the man who has the scratched marble in his hand indicating who will make her wish come true is Max McCord, who’d left his wealthy fiance for a last fling on his own before marriage, There’s a scene on the kitchen floor that broke me.
I’ll check that out. Thanks!
I love Maggie Osbourne’s books! She’s hard to find but I haven’t read anything of hers I did not like; and Silver Lining is a personal keeper. Great suggestion.
Years, by LaVyrle Spencer. Historical romance, American, prairie, mail order bride trope. Loved this one so much, and cried several times – life in those times were tough!! HEA ending, and there is sex on the page after a good slow burn romance.
I generally don’t cry reading romance, but I cried reading Midnight Pleasures by Eloisa James. This was her second book (so long ago!) and the sad part was the loss of a child. I have never lost a pregnancy, but I cry every time I read it anyway.
I have no memory of that book despite Goodreads telling me I have indeed read it. I’ll check it out. Thanks.