Love stories with sad endings
The greatest love stories of all time don’t always end with a happily ever after.
Sometimes, yes, it is nice to have a warm, fuzzy happy romance book to warm your heart. But a lot of the time a tragic ending to a romance can make the love story all the more poignant and beautiful. So if you love a good romance that can make you cry, just know you’re not alone. There is something truly unforgettable about a sad ending in a book, something that sticks with you long after you’ve read the last page. Here are books-maybe not strictly romance books-with sad endings that will break your heart in the best way.
Love doesn’t always work out. No one knows this better than Evie Thomas in Instructions for Dancing. One afternoon, Evie witnesses a couple kissing and is immediately overcome by visions of the couple’s entire love story from beginning to end. Now any time she sees a couple kiss, she sees the whole relationship flash before her eyes, and she knows that most love stories end in heartbreak. And yet, despite knowing how heartbreaking love is, she still finds herself falling for X, her dance partner for a ballroom dance competition.
Author Nicholas Sparks’s name has become synonymous with sad romance stories. But A Walk to Remember is one of the author’s saddest, especially because the story is inspired by Sparks’s own sister, Danielle Sparks Lewis, who died of cancer in 2000. In this novel, Landon Carter looks fondly back on 1958, his last year at Beaufort High and the year he fell in love. Shy, sweet Jamie, the daughter of the town’s Baptist minister, wasn’t the type of girl Landon thought he would fall for, but his love for Jamie remains with him so many years later.
One Day is the love story of Emma and Dexter, who meet on the night of their graduation on July 15, 1988. And while they have to part ways after that day, they keep returning to each other year after year. This novel checks in on the couple every year over the next 20 years, giving readers snapshots of their life that tell a full love story, from its highs to its tragic lows.
Long distance relationships can be hard, but how about romances that are torn apart by time? Time has never been on the side of The Time Traveler’s Wife’s Clare and Henry, who live on completely different timelines. Clare first met Henry when she was 6 and he was 36. Then they were married when Clare was 23 and Henry 31. How is this possible? Henry has Chrono-Displacement Disorder, meaning he shifts through time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity throughout in his life. Clare and Henry’s love for one another is enough to overcome these obstacles, but for how long?
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is perhaps one of the most infamously sad contemporary romance stories. So if you are one of the few people who still hasn’t read this one yet, be forewarned. You won’t want to start John Green’s most popular novel without a box of tissues close by. The Fault in Our Stars is the story of Hazel, a young girl who is living with terminal cancer. To help herself come to terms with her diagnosis, she attends a support group for kids with cancer, but the sessions don’t do much to change her outlook on life. That is, until Augustus Waters. Just when Hazel has all but given up hope, Augustus teaches her how to savor the life she has, and he teaches her how to love. And while both Hazel and Augustus know they won’t have all the time in the world together, they find ways to savor what time they have.
Finally, if you want to take a very long walk to a sad ending, there’s no better journey than the one you’ll take in this classic by Leo Tolstoy.
Originally published at https://www.kobo.com on April 10, 2022.
