Read It with a Kleenex/ Tearjerkers! April 2025

heart felt, tear jerkers, full of feels, emotions....chewing glass.

Showing 1 - 20 of 20  There are a total of 155 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "All the children are home"
Star rating for All the children are home
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"When Dahlia decided to become a foster mother, she had a few caveats: no howling newborns, no delinquents, and above all, no girls. A harrowing incident years before left her a virtual prisoner in her own home, forever wary of the heartbreak and limitation of a girl's life. Eleven years after they began fostering, the Moscatellis are raising three children as their own and Dahlia and Louie consider their family complete, but when the social worker...
Book cover for "And the mountains echoed"
Star rating for And the mountains echoed
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Presents a story inspired by human love, how people take care of one another, and how choices resonate through subsequent generations. Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and step-mother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Adbullah, Pari, as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was...
Book cover for "Ask again, yes"
Star rating for Ask again, yes
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"A family saga about two Irish American families in a New York suburb, the love between two of their children, and the tragedies that threaten to tear them apart and destroy their futures"--
Book cover for "Dear Edward"
Star rating for Dear Edward
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • “Make sure you have tissues handy when you read [this] sure-footed tearjerker” (NPR) about a young boy who must learn to go on after surviving tragedy, from the author of the Oprah’s Book Club pick Hello Beautiful.
Now streaming as an Apple TV+ series starring Connie Britton, written and...
Book cover for "The death of Vivek Oji"
Star rating for The death of Vivek Oji
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"A tender, potent, and compulsively readable novel of a Nigerian-Indian family and the deeply held secret that tests their traditions and bonds"--
Book cover for "Earth's the right place for love"
Star rating for Earth's the right place for love
Series:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"This beautiful novel tells the love story of young Arthur Moses and Nola, and how a young man grew up to become the wise old man known as Arthur trulove. Set in the 1950s in the warm community of Mason, Missouri, Arthur is a shy, unathletic teenage boy, in love with the most beautiful girl in his class. He is thrilled when they become friends, but he wants more than friendship. Alas, he learns that Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses--Arthur's older...
Book cover for "Finding Ashley"
Star rating for Finding Ashley
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Two estranged sisters get the chance to connect again and right the wrongs of the past."--
Book cover for "Golden boy"
Star rating for Golden boy
Description:
Presenting themselves to the world as an effortlessly excellent family, successful criminal lawyer Karen, her Parliament candidate husband, and her intelligent athlete son, Max, find their world crumbling in the wake of a friend's betrayal and the secretabout Max's intersexual identity.
Book cover for "Hamnet"
Star rating for Hamnet
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman--a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder...
Book cover for "Hello beautiful"
Star rating for Hello beautiful
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it's a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three...
Book cover for "The Kamogawa food detectives"
Star rating for The Kamogawa food detectives
Series:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series, for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold. What's the one dish you'd do anything to taste just one more time? Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason customers stop by... The father-daughter...
Book cover for "The light through the leaves"
Star rating for The light through the leaves
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"In a moment of crisis, Ellis Abbey leaves her daughter, Viola, unattended - for just a few minutes. But when she returns, Viola is gone. A breaking point in an already fractured marriage, Viola's abduction causes Ellis to disappear as well - into grief, guilt, and addiction. Convinced she can only do more harm to her family, Ellis leaves her husband and young sons, burying her desperate ache for her children deeper with every step into the mountain...
Book cover for "A little life"
Star rating for A little life
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE
A...
Book cover for "Lost in the Long March"
Star rating for Lost in the Long March
Description:
"China, 1934: A naive orphan and shy gunsmith, Ping, has fallen in love with Yong, who is a sophisticated veteran, a skilled marksman, and a true believer in Marxist ideology. Winning her affections will take an ideological battle--something he does not understand. To make matters worse, Yong has shown interest in Ping's best friend, Luo. On the eve of a great Communist defeat, Ping sabotages Luo's rifle, causing the bullet to backfire into his friend's...
Book cover for "Night. Sleep. Death. The stars"
Star rating for Night. Sleep. Death. The stars
Average Rating:
2 stars
Description:
This novel provides an examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. Stark and penetrating, it's an exploration of psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual healing.
Book cover for "Should we stay or should we go"
Star rating for Should we stay or should we go
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"When her father dies, Kay Wilkinson can't cry. Over ten years, Alzheimer's had steadily eroded this erudite man into a paranoid lunatic. Surely one's own father passing should never come as such a relief. Both medical professionals, Kay and her husband Cyril have seen too many elderly patients in similar states of decay. Although healthy and vital in their early fifties, the couple fears what may lie ahead. Determined to die with dignity, Cyril makes...
Book cover for "Slammed"
Star rating for Slammed
Series:
Slammed novels volume 1.
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Following the unexpected death of her father, eighteen-year-old Layken is forced to be the rock for both her mother and her younger brother. Outwardly, she appears resilient and tenacious, but inwardly, she's losing hope. One young man brings change to all of this. After moving across the country, Layken meets her attractive twenty-one-year-old neighbor who has an intriguing passion for slams. Within days of their introduction, Will and Layken form...
Book cover for "A thousand splendid suns"
Star rating for A thousand splendid suns
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
Two women born a generation apart witness the destruction of their home and family in wartorn Kabul, losses incurred over the course of thirty years that test the limits of their strength and courage.
Book cover for "Transcendent kingdom"
Star rating for Transcendent kingdom
Author:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"A novel about faith, science, religion, and family that tells the deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief, narrated by a fifth year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford school of medicine studying the neural circuits of reward seeking behavior in mice"--
Book cover for "Ways the world could end"
Star rating for Ways the world could end
Author:
Description:
"Ways the World Could End is a story of grief, friendship, and love--the love between parents and children, between spouses, between teenagers, between strangers. It is a story that asks us to consider what we can and cannot forgive, and reminds us that often the hardest thing to forgive is ourselves"--