I love a (well foreshadowed) plot twist as much as the next person but I also really love about a story you know from the very outset is a tragedy. I'm not talking about Romeo and Juliet or The Titanic or The Song of Achilles where they're famous for being a tragic (or based on a famous story where everyone knows the ending), I'm talking about the books where the tone is set to be a tragedy so clearly from the beginning but you just don't know how yet.
have an incomplete list ive complied
Little Mushroom by Shisi (it's just so dystopian and just keeps getting worse to the point where a happy ending would be so out of line with the story, even though I would call the ending pretty happy)
The Daughter's War by Christopher Buehlman (it goes all in on just how gd gruesome and nonsensical war can be. I knew the whole time is was going to be a slaughter, i was mostly trying to guess who might survive)
Angels Before Men by Rafael Nicolás (it's a retelling of Lucifer's fall so you know that he's going to fall at the end, but how? what pushes the sweet, shy angel in the beginning to that point? i read this whole thing with a pit in my stomach)
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (maybe this is cheating bc it is famous and a tragedy, but it's clear from page 1 that he dies and the slow spiral there was incredibly painful)
Blood Over Bright Haven by ml wang (so I actually didn't see it coming at all but my friend tells me it was damn obvious from halfway through so I'll take her word for it. Sciona literally tells the audience, albeit indirectly, what she is going to do and you have to wait in sick anticipation to see if she'll follow through)
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (this one is an odd one because some people see it and some don't. all i can say is that the entire book the reader constantly doubts Baru's loyalties to everyone, even to herself, and it's incredibly stressful)
