Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books That Were Hard For Me To Read

The ladies at The Broke and The Bookish this week are asking us to list the top ten books that were hard for us to read. These are all books that either broke my heart or made me afraid to turn the page, knowing that something terrible was about to happen.

First up, the tear jerkers:

1. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes - this one may appear on all kinds of lists for me; it's here this week because it made me literally sob...in the lunchroom at work

2. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion - Didion writes about the death of her husband and her first year without him

3. Every Last One by Anna Quindlen - if I'd had any inkling of the terrible thing that was going to happen in this book, it might have fallen into both categories. Instead, I only experienced shock and then the terrible sadness that followed.

4. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt - desperate poverty, abusive teachers and clergy, and an alcoholic father; need I say more?

5. Sophie's Choice by William Styron - because I knew what was meant by Sophie's choice when I read the book but also because of her time in a concentration camp, my heart ached for Sophie throughout this one

Now for the books that put me on edge:

6. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver - long before I reached the shocking points of this book, it was hard to read about a woman who really did not like her own child

7. The Kite Runner by Kahlid Hosseini - from the brutal rape early on to the journey back to Afghanistan to save a friend abandoned decades earlier, I was on edge throughout this book

8. City Of Women by David R. Gillham - in the midst of WWII, the wife of a soldier finds herself caught up in an effort to save Jews and the line between right and wrong is not always entirely clear

9. A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash - the tension in this book begins almost from the beginning and never lets up until the horrific, shocking conclusion

10. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand - the true story about one man's survival, against all odds after being lost at sea for 47 days only to be "rescued" by the Japanese and put into prisoner of war camps

What books were hard for you to read? Was it because they were emotionally charged, horrific, scary, or hard to read simply because they were so bad?