SPOILER ALERT
to reply to AmazeMe's point
I read and write literary fiction, and don't know most of the novels mentioned, so I can I ask exactly what was so crap and unsatisfying about the endings people are complaining about? What would have satisfied you as a reader?
Sorry if your book does any of these, but:
For me, what can ruin a book is when suddenly at the end what happens is incredibly visual is often disappointing, because it feels like the author is hoping that the book will get made into a film (and things get v dramatic, like jumping off a building or something; or the bad guy gets killed, but then wakes up a comes after the good people again and has to be killed all over again).
In Gone Girl, it's all about whether a missing wife was murdered, whether she ran away to escape cruelty, or whether she's working on a secret agenda to her own ends. It's all very much in doubt, until suddenly with about 1/3rd to go she's revealed as being COMPLETELY evil. So, so soooooo evil - it's ridiculous.
Another 'no no' is when the wrong person dies:
My Sister's Keeper is about a sibling who is born via IVF so that her umbilical chord can be used in an operation for her older sister who has cancer. The operation doesn't help, so she's "mined" throughout her life (this kind-of all happens before the story starts, although it's revealed throughout the book). The book starts with the IVF sister going to court to refuse to have another operation to benefit her cancerous sister. The book is the court case, there's a lawyer. The dramatic 'end scene' involves the lawyer having some kind of seizure (can't remember why that's relevant, but it annoyed me intensely at the time), the IVF sister (who is the most likable person and has the reader's sympathy) runs out of the building and (I think) gets knocked over and killed. Her organs are used and the cancer sister gets better. The end.
One Day is about 2 people, a man and a woman. The female character to me is better written and more interesting. The author kills her off with around a third to go, the book is less interesting without her!
When people do crazy, out of character things it's unsatisfying. By this I DON'T mean character's making bad choices. For example, in The Girl on the Train (which someone mentioned up-thread, but I REALLY enjoyed), she is someone who's life is on a downward spiral. She's alcoholic, fat, unemployed and pretending not to be, she's renting a room in a house with someone who's REALLY pissed off with her, and she's running out of options.
There's a scene in the book (not part of the end) she gets home late and drunk and in a mess. Her flatmate is out. She's bleeding and gets blood everywhere, she soils (can't remember which end, and it might happen more than once in the book) and as a reader you're thinking "clean it up, clean it up, CLEAN IT UP". She doesn't and further pisses off her flatmate. She thinks about making late night phone calls/texts and decides not to, reaching to open a second bottle of wine... etc.
This character making bad choices is part of who she is at this point and where she is in her life. So it's the opposite of this I'm talking about.
Sorry for all the spoilers.
Can't remember who posted it (think it was previous page) but I heard The Knife of Never Letting Go as an audio book - fucking thing went on forever. And yet, so dull! NO WAY would I read the next two. I did cry when Manchie (sp???) got killed though.