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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To start a thread where we can warn each other about books with crap endings?

239 replies

SinisterBumFacedCat · 18/09/2015 12:59

Her by Harriet Lane

I feel like I've wasted time reading this book because it had a truly shit ending.

Also The Deep End by Emily Barr

Please share yours....

OP posts:
LilacSpunkMonkey · 19/09/2015 18:50

Oh, I am a huge Stephen King fan but Dome fucked me right off. And I bought the sodding hardback, which was enormous and heavy and messed with my bedtime reading. The ending? Basically, aliens. Cop out ending. But I'd run out of patience before then anyway, what with everyone dying left right and centre. How they've managed to make it last more than once TV series I do not know. They must have massively tinkered with the story.

The Dark Tower, otoh, made me go 'wooaaah'. I think about that ending a lot!

nooka · 19/09/2015 19:19

Sniffs I stopped reading Alliegiant half way through, I can't thihnk of many books I've done that with, especially YA as they aren't very hard work, but it just got ridiculous. dd was very pissed off with me as she wanted to rant about the ending, but I still couldn't bring myself to pick it back up and get more moaning or inexplicable action.

Unfortunately fantasy series often disappoint with the ending, generally the longer the series the more likely the final volumes will be a bit crap and the end a bit of a whimper.

My personal 'favourite' crap ending is Harry Potter. The epilogue is one of the most dire, trite, no one learned anything or developed in any way at all end.

On the other hand the bitter sweet sad ending of the Hunger Games trilogy for me is spot on. You don't go through hell and have a happy ever after ending.

Andrewofgg · 19/09/2015 20:45

Hamlet. Everyone seems to end up dead.

Taylia · 19/09/2015 21:03

I thought Insurgent and Alligent were awful (last 2 books of Divergent series) it took me a long time to finish the final book and I had to force myself.

ProcrastinatorGeneral · 19/09/2015 21:11

I haven't finished Allegiant either. I can't even find it, suspect the twelve year old has snaffled it.

I hates The Amnesiac by Sam Taylor. It's set in a city I know really well so I thought I'd give it a go. It was mostly shite, with an epically shite ending that solves nothing. Also, the daft arse of an author deliberately names all the streets in the city wrong, you can just a about navigate if you know it well, but fuck me he made a mess!

IonaNE · 19/09/2015 21:23

Agree with John Grisham's Gray Mountain (I do like his real legal thrillers, the early ones, but he seems to have lost the touch). I also agree with The Little Friend by Donna Tartt that felt like an epic fail (especially as The Secret History is one of the best books I have ever read).

IonaNE · 19/09/2015 21:24

Also agree with the Dome. Pathetic :(

justkeeponsmiling · 19/09/2015 21:30

Everything by Sophie Hannah!
I've read a few of her books because every time I used to read the bla on the back of the book I used to let myself get fooled into thinking "ooohh, how can such a mystery possibly be solved??" and every time I finished it I ended up thinking WTAF?
I've wisened up now and stay well clear Smile

justkeeponsmiling · 19/09/2015 21:32

And whoever said "Life of Pi", you reminded me how pissed off I was at the ending! I'm pretending now the last page or two don't exist.

Botanicbaby · 19/09/2015 23:06

agree with PP on Lionel Shriver's 'Big Brother'.

was an engaging, compelling read up till the end. Such a let down.

LeChien · 19/09/2015 23:11

Haven't rtft but Divergent trilogy, don't bother reading the last one (Allegient?). It's shit. Totally disappointing. Why would anyone think it's appropriate to change the whole tone of the book and basically be, well, shit.

LeChien · 19/09/2015 23:20

Have rtft now, I see I'm not the only one!

LaContessaDiPlump · 19/09/2015 23:22

I actually quite enjoyed The Lovely Bones - I lost a sibling quite young and felt that it was an unusual and touching representation of how life goes on for the family left behind and how they cope with it.

The ending of Gone Girl was rubbish though Grin

00100001 · 19/09/2015 23:38

LITTLE WOMEN! Angry

Fatmomma99 · 20/09/2015 00:44

Y Y to Little Women!

ALassUnparalleled · 20/09/2015 02:05

Everything by Sophie Hannah so true the blurb on the back used to fool me too.

Twice in the case of Little Face- I had completely forgotten I'd read it. Got about 20 pages in the second time.

AbbyCadabra · 20/09/2015 03:05

It's been a while but wasn't The Dome ending an alien 'child' with one of those bug observation dome things?

I will go to my grave thinking Donna Tartt forgot to write the last chapter of The Little Friend.
Not entirely happy with the ending of A God in Ruins either. It was a cracking story and the ending seems totally unnecessary.

00100001 · 20/09/2015 08:35

'It' by Stephen King, what a shit ending

Alisvolatpropiis · 20/09/2015 09:56

The Girl with All The Gifts.

All books by Kate Mosse are appalling.

Fatmomma99 · 20/09/2015 11:04

Been thinking about this. In my book group, the books people don't like are when there are some form of major error. So, if you're an engineer and the plot hangs on something like a bridge collapsing because someone used the wrong screws in the manufacture and you know this could never, never happen or be true, then the book seems false to you.
I try not to let factual stuff get in the way for me, because an author doesn't need to be an expert in a field to want to write about it, unless it's a real basic thing.

However for me, if the EMOTION seems false then I find the book unsatisfying. i.e. if someone acts massively out of character.

I really enjoyed Kevin, but at one point she's confessing to her husband (via letter) a painful/guilty memory and the author stops it mid recollection and starts again as a new chapter (thus creating something of a cliff-hanger for the reader) (this isn't at the end of the book, btw, it's somewhere in the middle). I found this VERY distracting and it took me out of the book for a while, because I think if we are telling someone something that is painful or upsetting for us (or was) we don't interrupt ourselves.

hackmum · 20/09/2015 11:11

Muddha: "can anyone fill me in on Julian Barnes' Sense of an Ending?"

The thing that annoyed me about that was that when the main character meets his ex-girlfriend from 40-odd years ago, she attempts to explain things by driving him around and pointing at them. And he misunderstands what she's trying to say, and she says: "You don't get it, do you?" And I think, well, dear, the reason he doesn't get it is you haven't explained it to him. Just sit down and explain what actually happened rather than pointing at people and hoping he works it out.

yoshipoppet · 20/09/2015 11:33

I read a lot of YA fiction as well, and would like to nominate Kevin Brooks' Being. Also Patrick Ness' More Than This.
I like to be told a story when I'm reading. It needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Both the above books are missing a conclusion and I found them disappointing.

00100001 · 20/09/2015 14:00

I'm going to add to 'IT' pretty much any Stephen King Novel, with the exception if Carrie

Tanith · 20/09/2015 14:07

I'm another who was furious at the "it was all a dream" ending to the Box of Delights.
All that imagination, suspense and excitement and he can't think of a better ending? I remember seeing an adaptation of it years ago on TV and the end was just such a letdown.

In fact, the only time I have ever known "it was all a dream" to work - really work - was Diana Wynne-Jones' "Witch Week". It was a fantastically imaginative ending very well written.

ALassUnparalleled · 20/09/2015 14:22

And he misunderstands what she's trying to say, and she says: "You don't get it, do you?" And I think, well, dear, the reason he doesn't get it is you haven't explained it to him.

I've just remembered about this book- the title alone wasn't ringing any bells but that's exactly what my book group said about it. None of us "got it" either.

Re the comment about not liking books because of obvious factual inaccuracies I am a lawyer and that drives me demented. I started an AIBU on that topic a while back under another name - my most successful by miles- it went into double figure pages.