On Bookfinity, we know that picking up the right book is about more than genre—it's about mood.
Bookfinity Moodies: Emotional books of 2024
Get ready for a rollercoaster of emotions! The top six most emotional books of 2024 have been praised for their ability to tug at the heartstrings and leave a lasting impact. From moments of overwhelming joy to heart-wrenching sadness, these stories have brought readers to tears—both happy and bittersweet. Whether through deeply personal memoirs, powerful fiction, or poignant tales of love and loss, these books are the ones you'll want to experience with tissues close at hand. Which one will move you the most?
Agree or have a different opinion? Let us know by leaving a review!
Emotional - 6 Nominated books that kept you reaching for a tissue. 🥲 :
Intermezzo
by Sally Rooney
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A National Indie Bestseller
Short-listed for the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year
Finalist for the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year
One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year
An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family--but especially love--from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties--successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women--his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
Martyr!
by Kaveh Akbar
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR FOR 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father's life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past--toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
Sandwich
by Catherine Newman
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go.
For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family's yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and--thanks to the cottage's ancient plumbing--septic too.
This year's vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past--except, perhaps, for Rocky's hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing--her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
by Avery Cunningham
The year is 1921, and America is burning. A fire of vice and virtue rages on every shore, and Chicago is its beating heart.
Nelly Sawyer is the daughter of the "wealthiest Negro in America," whose affluence catapulted his family to the heights of Black society. After the unexpected death of her only brother, Nelly becomes the premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society influence and marriage. For the past year, she has worked undercover as an investigative journalist, sharing the achievements and tribulations of everyday Black people living in the shadow of Jim Crow. Her latest assignment thrusts her into the den of a dangerous vice lord: the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street.
The Ministry of Time
by Kaliane Bradley
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF SUMMER 2024 - A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK - ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE SUMMER
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering "expats" from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible--for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
She is tasked with working as a "bridge" living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as "1847" or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as "washing machines," "Spotify," and "the collapse of the British Empire." But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.
The Women
by Kristin Hannah
A #1 bestseller on The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times!
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.