Which of the trilogy do you find the saddest?

[Megan]

Ok so I finished The Bronze Horseman last night (the fourth time I've read it) and well I was howling my eyes out even though I know the entire story, and I found the first book devastating but I think the second book makes me cry even more. I can't even open it without tears streaming down my face - of course as a result of the first book, but to me the entire second book I spend in tears... What about everyone else?

[Moni]

So I think I cried many times through all three books. And also like you have re-read them all..lol I too cry no matter which book I crack open. But I would have to say the one for me that was most powerful was TBH...

[Megan]

Yeah now that I'm reading TBTHC again, the tears were at the beginning which was a direct result of the end of TBH. That part is close to unbearable to read. I also broke down when she heard Orbeli on the radio, but The Bronze Horseman is just devastating...

[Kelly]

For me it would be The Summer Garden. That book just blew me away. I really did not expect the devastation I thought war over in America HEA. NOT! Seeing how the post traumatic stress trickled down to Antman and effected every aspect of daily life for the rest of their lives.
But TSG would not be if not for TBH so I love them all!
'Lazarevo drips you into my soul, dawn drop by moonlight drop from the river Kama. When you look for me, look for me there, because that's where I'll be all the days of my life.'

[Laura]

Kelly wrote: "For me it would be The Summer Garden. That book just blew me away. I really did not expect the devastation I thought war over in America HEA. NOT! Seeing how the post traumatic stress trickled d..."

I'm at the point that I cry through all three books. I'm just an endless puddle of tears. But the first time I finished TSG, just imagining them older, after everything they had gone through, with their children around them and their lives mostly behind them, it killed me. I remember wishing I could have gone back and taken some of the struggle from them, so they could have had more happiness, as they deserved.

[Toni]

For me it will always be TBH. Tried and true. I did LOVE the others too and I sobbed and shook my way thru all three, but TBH...them finding and fighting for each other...was the saddest of all. Then again, how can I say that TandA wasn't saddest? Alexander being tortured..breaks my heart..pining for Tatiana...wanting to live, wanting to die?! And Tatiana, living in the past, unable to move forward, obsessed with finding Alexander, and the few times she even attempts a step forward she regrets it, like she's giving up on him. This book really affected me in that I thought what I would feel if it were my husband and I was feeling her every pain in my gut, her every stress, her every struggle. Of course then there is TSG. The most 'relatable' to most. The real life, not the romanticized war, but the war..the battles of real life esp after such a devastating life they must get past to move forward..the psychological scars as well as the needs of the real family as they find a home, a job, a life without losing one another. I will say that the scene out of all three books which shook me to my core, which was quite possibly the best written scene ever was the fight scene in TSG. OMG. Both of them. I could go into detail but there is too much. It's heartwrenching, gutwrenching...I love that scene (as much as it tears my heart out!!)!!!! Paullina at her finest. Hmmmmmmmm..so I said TBH was the saddest?? Well, clearly I cannot make a decision. Each, in it's own particular way is the saddest. I think I completely ruined the point of this thread, which is a good question...but I think on merit they all stand tall as breaking your heart!!!! (mine at least)

[Leea]

For me it's the Summer Garden, It's the combinations of surviving the worst that life has to give and they trying to move past it, love your family and make a life when you are beyond broken. That book broke my heart and then put it back together again.