These are sorted by how hard they hit, gentlest first. The last few are not gentle at all.
Content notes are included where a book deals with something heavier than ordinary grief, because "it made me cry" and "it was distressing to read" are different experiences and you deserve to know which one you are choosing.
Sarah J. Maas · 626 pages · 2016
The book the entire fandom is actually talking about: recovery, a different court, and a bargain that turns out to mean something else.
M. L. Rio · 354 pages · 2017
Seven fourth-year Shakespeare students who have stopped being able to tell rehearsal from real life. One of them dies. One of them goes to prison.
R. F. Kuang · 527 pages · 2018
Starts as a scrappy war-college underdog story and turns into something considerably harder to read, drawing on the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Heads up: Graphic war violence, genocide, self-harm and drug addiction.
T. J. Klune · 394 pages · 2020
A by-the-book caseworker is sent to inspect an orphanage for magical children, one of whom is the Antichrist and mostly wants to be a bellhop.
Fredrik Backman · 341 pages · 2019
A failed bank robbery turns into a hostage situation at an apartment viewing, and the hostages are worse at this than the robber.
Emily Henry · 361 pages · 2020
A romance novelist who has stopped believing in love and the literary-fiction rival next door swap genres for a summer. Much sadder than the cover suggests.
Emily Henry · 400 pages · 2023
A couple who broke up five months ago pretend they did not for one last week at the cottage, because nobody wants to be the reason the friend group ends.
Taylor Jenkins Reid · 355 pages · 2019
A seventies rock band breaks up at the height of its fame and nobody agrees why. Written entirely as interview transcript, which should not work and does.
Matt Haig · 288 pages · 2020
Between life and death there is a library where every book is a life you could have lived. A gentle, very readable book about regret.
Heads up: Opens with a suicide attempt.
Colleen Hoover · 352 pages · 2022
The sequel readers asked for: what happens after, from both sides. Softer than the first book on purpose, and it only works if you have read that one.
Heads up: Continues a story about domestic abuse; the earlier book is referenced throughout.