The Most Heartbreaking Reads From Reese's Book Club

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Reese Witherspoon has given us more than a few reasons to smile. With a book club curated under the cheerful banner of her business empire Hello Sunshine, and a famously sunny disposition to match, it's perhaps unsurprising that many of her picks lean towards the heartwarming. She's brought us stories of inspirational heroines and swoon-worthy romantic reads – all certain to keep us feeling sweet.  

But even Witherspoon knows that storytelling isn't all sparkle. Some of the most powerful works she's championed are the ones more bruising than blissful. Over the years, she's slipped a number of heartbreakers into the mix, and these are stories that leave readers red-eyed and entirely undone.

Sometimes, that's exactly what we need. There's a particular relief, a catharsis, in being allowed to cry for someone else's emotional aches. Witherspoon's sensibility — sprightly, smiling, and sanguine — may draw you in, but sometimes, it's her harder picks that remind us of what stories are capable of.

"Broken Country??? More like broken heart!!" writes one Goodreads reviewer about Clare Leslie Hall's "Broken Country." "I closed the last page with tears in my eyes and a sigh of satisfaction," writes another. In fact, one bookworm on the platform went as far to say, "This is what reading is all about ... There was love, heartbreak, grief, anger, intensity, and sadness. In fact, have tissues handy because the ending will probably leave you needing some."

Told in two echoing timelines — the muted postwar hush of 1955 and the simmering tensions of 1968 — "Broken Country" traces the long shadow of a summer romance that never truly ended. Beth is a farmer's daughter who once fell for Gabriel Wolfe, the heir to the village's grand estate. Thirteen years later, she's a farmer's wife living a life of small repetitions when Gabriel returns, freshly divorced, bringing his young son (and the past) with him. After a tragic accident sets the village whispering and a trial threatens to upend everything, Beth is pulled once more into the orbit of the man she once loved.

"Broken Country" is a mystery, a romance, and a tragedy all in one. As Reese Witherspoon herself said, "trust me—you are going to LOSE YOUR CHICKEN over it" – an analogy that will make sense once you're stuck into its pages.

After making a generation weep into their pillowcases with "Me Before You," Jojo Moyes returned in 2019 with a different kind of heartbreak in "The Giver of Stars." Here, she widens the lens in one of Reese's historical fiction picks, this one centered around five women on horseback, riding deep into Depression-era Appalachia with saddlebags full of books.

Alice Wright crosses the Atlantic expecting a new life, but finds herself in a different kind of cage. Her marriage, hastily arranged and already fraying, leaves her adrift in the Kentucky mountains she barely understands. It's the sharp-tongued and fiercely independent Margery O'Hare who offers her a way out. Margery leads a band of horseback librarians ferrying words to places the world has forgotten, and Alice, craving purpose, signs on. And so begins the journey. The women who sign up stitch themselves into each other's days. But by the time a body appears in the woods, their strength is tested by a town eager to close ranks.

With this horse-riding sisterhood smuggling stories into the hollers, Moyes draws from the real-life Pack Horse Library Project, launched under Roosevelt's New Deal — when women rode out with saddlebags of novels and poetry tucked beside field guides and Bibles. In our present age of book bans and shuttered libraries, this story feels extra poignant. But Moyes is never peachy. She lets the heartbreak come through the clatter of hooves.

Since its release in 2015, "The Nightingale" has become something of a modern classic. Kristin Hannah's World War II epic struck a nerve with readers worldwide, earning the top spot on The New York Times bestseller list, sweeping up Goodreads' Historical Novel of the Year, and spending nearly a year on NPR's Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List. It also holds the rare honor of being Reese Witherspoon's highest-rated book club pick of all time. And it definitely earns that praise with its prose. 

In the shadow of Nazi occupation, two sisters find themselves charting different courses through the wreckage of wartime France. The pragmatic Vianne focuses on surviving the invasion one ration card and curfew at a time. Her defiant younger sister Isabelle, on the other hand, slips through borderlines as part of the Resistance, becoming a lifeline for downed Allied pilots, guiding them over the Pyrenees in secret.

Loosely inspired by the real-life heroines history almost forgot, Hannah's novel does not shy away from the brutality of war or the aching complexity of sisterhood. It's a story of sacrifice and survival, soaked in sorrow, and certain to summon tears.

The only thing more shattering than hearing a heartbreaking story is knowing it actually happened. And so enters the memoir, "Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After." Heather Harpham is a West Coast actress; Brian Morton is a New York novelist. Their romance is brief but bright — until the news of an unexpected pregnancy fractures it. Heather returns to California, alone, prepared to raise her child without Brian's help. But within hours of giving birth, everything changes. Her daughter's body can't make the blood it needs to sustain her, and thus begins the slow, grinding work of survival.

As the baby's condition worsens, Brian reenters the frame. Harpham's memoir traces the needle-pricked months in hospital rooms, whilst also circling the uneasy gravity between two people trying to become something like a family. Told in clipped, perceptive prose with flashes of gallows humor, "Happiness" traces the strange intimacy born in crisis. The irony in the title is not lost on us, given its devastating premise, but it's the crookedness of the road that renders it's moments of light all the more luminous.

Tembi Locke's "From Scratch" delivers the kind of heartbreak that reminds you to cling tighter to what you love. Its sumptuous Sicilian setting earns its place among Reese's best beach reads for your summer reading list. But don't be fooled by the lemons, linen, and light late nights — its tender themes of grief and family steep this story in loss. You may start it under the beach umbrella, but you'll be grateful for the shade of your sunglasses to hide the tears when they come.

This is the author's real-life love story, from a chance meeting with Sicilian chef Saro whilst studying abroad in Florence, to their life together in Los Angeles, interrupted far too soon by his cancer diagnosis. In the wake of his death, Locke returns to Sicily with their young adopted daughter, navigating the landscape of her husband's past and the complicated ties of this cross-cultural family.

Second homes and chosen families can offer refuge, but they carry their own weight of memory. Locke writes on these subjects with an intimacy that spares no ache, but also refuses to abandon beauty. Like the best notes on grief, this memoir will leave you both gutted and grateful.

Each of these titles was handpicked by Reese Witherspoon for her wildly popular book club, but your heart won't come out unscathed. These are sad stories that earn their sorrow. Chosen for their emotional depth and unflinching narratives, their ability to leave readers feeling wrung out offers a tender catharsis. Reese has confirmed it and their plots all but guarantee it. But importantly, bookworms from all corners of the internet have echoed the same refrain in their online reviews. These are stories that have the power to hurt us, but beautifully and in a way you're sure to appreciate.