Page 6 | Your really annoying ending to a book?!

Liltzero · 2023-04-09T14:55:16+00:00

I've just finished reading a book where the plot was a woman investigating the death of her sister, a death which the police thought was suicide, but she thought murder. The ending was maddening! The reader was left not knowing whether our chief character was murdered by the same man who killed her sister or was she rescued in the nick of the time?! What books have you read with a frustrating or wrong conclusion or non-conclusion?

redyellowpinkbluegreen · 14/04/2023 18:48

Behind her eyes is such a stupid ending. When it came out on Netflix everyone raves about it but I just couldn't bring myself to watch it. It's just so stupid!

Xiaoxiong · 14/04/2023 18:32

The fucking Goldfinch. Made worse by the fact that I enjoyed all of it so much until the last page which ruined the entire preceding 1000 pages. I wish I'd never finished it!!

Cinnamon23 · 14/04/2023 18:30

MurderAtTheBeautyPageant · 14/04/2023 11:16

A rip off of Kind Hearts and Coronets I believe. And I saw her publishers touting it as a clever and completely original twist.

Pfffffffft.

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I didn’t know about this! Wow…

MamaNewtNewt · 14/04/2023 18:22

@SequinsandStilettos yeah I don't think the ending of Life of Pi was a dream I thought it was a way for him to reduce the trauma when sharing his story.

mdh2020 · 14/04/2023 17:50

Robert Harris’ The Second Sleep - he seems to get fed up with the book and it has a weak ending rather like a child writing a story and ending it ‘and then they woke up’ or the Emmerdale story line where they flew a plane into the pub.

MorrisZapp · 14/04/2023 17:10

Edgar Sawtelle, about an amazing young man whose family breed specialist dogs. Turns out the story is based upon Hamlet, which I haven't read.

Six hundred slow pages (I stayed because I loved Edgar and was frightened for him) only for THAT to happen.

Fuck you, Shakespeare.

BotCrossedHun · 14/04/2023 17:03

SequinsandStilettos · 14/04/2023 16:29

just chose an easy way to end the book without resolving that dilemma
Well, no, Picoult had that ending from the very start before she even put pen to paper. It is meant to be a cruel twist of fate whereby the mother is robbed of the very child she gave birth to as a saviour sister to her pfb- not necessarily punishment for playing God but certainly the death you don't see coming. Having put all her efforts into the sick child, the brother and subsequent sister are overlooked. You don't know what you've got til it's gone - the overwhelming grief for the one who should not have died. It's her best book in my opinion.

It would have been interested to see some of that discussed and dealt with though, which might have changed my mind. As it was, it just felt to me like a cop-out.
I'd have been interested also to see the family dynamics carrying on after a saviour child refused to play that role.

Bobshhh · 14/04/2023 16:37

Agree with small pleasures.

and that stupid book about conscious swapping nonsense during dreams that was made into a Netflix series.

Nailsandthesea · 14/04/2023 16:32

goingforalovelywalk · 11/04/2023 09:19

Not really on topic but I remember reading a Jodi Picoult book (which I loved) and the movie version ending was totally different. I think they actually missed the point of the book, by changing the movie ending. Hhmmm!

The same I think this was my sisters keeper

SequinsandStilettos · 14/04/2023 16:31

*Life of Pi. Exciting tale of escaping tigers while adrift at sea!

'And then I woke up'*

It's been a while but wasn't the whole thing made up because he was in denial? It all happened but not the way he told it because that makes him the sole survivor who ate all the others?

SequinsandStilettos · 14/04/2023 16:29

just chose an easy way to end the book without resolving that dilemma
Well, no, Picoult had that ending from the very start before she even put pen to paper. It is meant to be a cruel twist of fate whereby the mother is robbed of the very child she gave birth to as a saviour sister to her pfb- not necessarily punishment for playing God but certainly the death you don't see coming. Having put all her efforts into the sick child, the brother and subsequent sister are overlooked. You don't know what you've got til it's gone - the overwhelming grief for the one who should not have died. It's her best book in my opinion.

ClassicHummus · 14/04/2023 13:37

Big Brother by Lionel Shriver.

Generally love her work and loved nearly all of this book - but closest ending to 'and this was all a dream' that I've ever come across.

IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads · 14/04/2023 13:22

MurderAtTheBeautyPageant · 14/04/2023 12:45

I haven't read Lessons in Chemistry but I this tweet I saw yesterday about it made me snort.

Thank you @MurderAtTheBeautyPageant. It very "Emperor's New Clothes".

Bellisina · 14/04/2023 13:18

Agree with how to kill your family. Was quite enjoying it, then the dreadful ending. Small spoilers, but I actually found it remarkably sexist- and I also hated how this genius planner would sit and write everything down? So so awful.

WandaWonder · 14/04/2023 13:13

I hate a big long intense books that keeps on going then ends in the last 2 pages

Feels rushed and the author forgot about so did a botch job

ZittiEBuoni · 14/04/2023 13:04

I've read the book in the OP, won't name it, but yes, that annoyed the hell out of me too.

I feel very, very few books end well compared with the enormous number that begin well.

BotCrossedHun · 14/04/2023 13:01

I too remembered being annoyed at the changed ending in My Sister's Keeper.

But at the same time, the novel's ending annoyed me too - it was like a cop out, to this difficult moral dilemma that she'd spent so much time building up, and then just chose an easy way to end the book without resolving that dilemma. I was cross about that.

meatbaseddessert · 14/04/2023 12:59

Life of Pi. Exciting tale of escaping tigers while adrift at sea!

'And then I woke up'.

Nowhereelsetogo90 · 14/04/2023 12:52

goingforalovelywalk · 11/04/2023 09:19

Not really on topic but I remember reading a Jodi Picoult book (which I loved) and the movie version ending was totally different. I think they actually missed the point of the book, by changing the movie ending. Hhmmm!

My Sisters Keeper? My Mum still remembers going to see that with me as a teenager and I shouted out loud in the cinema that the ending was wrong 🤣

MurderAtTheBeautyPageant · 14/04/2023 12:45

I haven't read Lessons in Chemistry but I this tweet I saw yesterday about it made me snort.

IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads · 14/04/2023 12:40

I've just finished Lessons in Chemistry. Loved the main character. Hated the ending - for all her independent feminism, the ending was far too convenient.

(I realise I'll be in the minority in this opinion).

Fifiellz · 14/04/2023 12:30

I really enjoyed Last One at the Party.

Read it straight after Covid so not to everyone's taste but I loved it until I got to the last page and then it's like - what happened to the rest of the book!!

It's not a cliffhanger it just feels like the author disappeared before the book was finished so someone else just typed The End

Sherrystrull · 14/04/2023 12:15

I think I found it so bad was that I desperately wanted a happy ending for the characters.

Iamblossom · 14/04/2023 11:59

Sherrystrull · 10/04/2023 09:42

I came on the thread to say the same. Horrible ending.

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I loved that book. I agree the ending wasn't very kind and it was tragic, but it wasn't a bad ending, just shocking!

Unlike The Girls That Disappeared, where the plot needed to end with a decent explanation of why they did, but the one it did end with was so preposterous and unlikely it infuriated me.

AnnaBegins · 14/04/2023 11:49

Jodi Picoult Wish you were here - it's basically a really fab story which then goes "and then I woke up and it was all a (covid) dream" so disappointing!