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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:
Bulbasaur · 22/09/2015 18:31

Spoilers for Hunger Games

It wasn't really that for me, I saw that Gale wasn't going to work out from book 2. I honestly thought it would end with her choosing no one and just living alone the way she was isolating herself from the world. It was the whole WTF factor of...

  • They put crazy girl who is clearly crazy in charge of execution.
  • Coin mentions very last minute "Oh yeah, new hunger games" after no indication that she was really malicious, just a bit hard nosed.
  • Everyone voted to go with it, and Coin wasn't the only one running things.
  • Coin apparently had no measures to protect herself from oh.. I dunno.. bullets? From rogue fighters.
  • Katniss kills Coin
  • Everything is just "happily ever after". Katniss is let off because... crazy. Everyone involved just shrugs and decides whatever, let's just get along.
HelenaDove · 22/09/2015 18:37

Noeuf Im currently reading Men Ive Loved Before by Adele Parks. Cant believe the extent of the sexism and misogyny in it. I chose it because a. its about a main character who is childfree by choice as i am. b. ive also read Playing Away and Tell Me Something by the same author and liked those.

I will finish Men Ive Loved Before because ive never not finished a book but fuck me its making me cross. Lap dancing clubs and how its just accepted and compared to day spas. Most of the male characters i would class as emotionally abusive and even worse there is reproductive coercion and as i read on i get the feeling its not going to be acknowledged as such. Yes i know its only a novel but it shows how much this kind of behaviour has been normalized. I was hoping for a strong childfree by choice character and to some extent Nat is. But even she seems to accept the strip club trope to some extent. Very disappointed.

HelenaDove · 22/09/2015 18:39

I have a copy of The State We"re In but im not going to bother even starting it.

ScrambledSmegs · 22/09/2015 18:57

For me it's the Rabbit Back Literature Society. I really enjoyed the weirdness and whimsy of the novel, but the resolution of the mystery about the notebook written by the 'genius' and the life and disappearance of Laura White were just a bit meh. I mean, I kind of filled in the blanks but felt really sad, like there was a great opportunity that was missed at the end of that book. Maybe you were meant to feel like that though.

If anyone else here has read it and got 'it' more than I did, can you tell me what it was?

BoskyCat · 22/09/2015 19:27

Thought of another one - Coraline by Neil Gaiman. Just disintegrates into a repetitive, meaningless mess. I was so disappointed as I read it was inspired by a very powerful folktale that I think is amazing, and it totally didn't take any tips about structure or dramatic arc from it at all!

bertsdinner · 22/09/2015 20:39

I found "The Girl in the Swing" by Richard Adams very disappointing.
It started off promising but I thought it was quite a dull read and just went on and on.
I quite enjoyed "Her", an interesting study in petty spite. I did initially think the ending was a bit OTT, but it sort of works.

BoskyCat · 22/09/2015 21:29

As as aside I am extremely fed up of novels with "Girl" in the title. I wouldn't mind so much if they were about girls, but no it's generally a WOMAN.

ALassUnparalleled · 22/09/2015 21:55

I found "The Girl in the Swing" by Richard Adams very disappointing

I love that book ! It is my favourite "so bad it's good" book. It's so badly written I read it to cheer me up if I'm ill..

It's such a perfect example of a male author writing out his own sexual fantasy as a heroine.

MissBattleaxe · 22/09/2015 22:00

Agree BoskyCat. It's been done to death now. My autobiography is going to be called "The Woman Who Refused to Buy Any More Books Called The Girl Who Did Something"

Oh, did someone upthread mention The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year by Sue Townsend? Appalling ending. I loved Sue Townsend so much I could forgive her anything, but that ending was lame.

BoskyCat · 22/09/2015 22:09

Ah but at least she was an actual woman :o

PotatoGun · 22/09/2015 22:48

ALass and Berts, but have you read Richard Adams' Maia? A doorstopper alternative-universe epic about a bosomy peasant girl who gets sold as a sex slave into the bedrooms of a corrupt elite, AND everyone falls in love with her AND she prevents a massacre AND despite being hailed as a goddess she stays all simple and unspoilt? Did I mention those bosoms?

Actually, it has a crap ending, too. Having cut a swathe through the city and with the world at her feet, she marries and has a baby on a provincial estate. And is safely neutered, while we're supposed to pity her friend, who sets up as a glamorous, powerful concubine and has a whale of a time...

Bambambini · 22/09/2015 23:46

She could have at least shagged Gale once - just once! I might have accepted the ending more if she had.

Girl On A Swing - rad it years ago and can't remember a sausage.

The ending of Les Miserables just left me heartbroken and angry. Not a bad ending but very emotional.

Fatmomma99 · 23/09/2015 00:01

I've read all the Hunger Games books and loved them, although I thought book 3 was generally weak, and I was sad she didn't end up with Gale, but I'm not going to comment further because ultimately these are children's books!!!!

However:
stopfaffing
why did you hate Girl on a Train so much? (you're not alone, it's been diss'ed up thread). I thought all those descriptions of her drunkeness were BRILLIANT. All that waking up hungover and chills running down her where she thinks "oh god, did I do anything last night???". I really, really got that. Maybe the difference between us is that you posted at around 4pm this aft, and I'm posting this, on the internet at gone 12!

HelenaDove

I have a copy of The State We"re In but im not going to bother even starting it. - I understand where you're coming from!
and

ScrambledSmegs
For me it's the Rabbit Back Literature Society. I really enjoyed the weirdness and whimsy of the novel, but the resolution of the mystery about the notebook written by the 'genius' and the life and disappearance of Laura White were just a bit meh. I mean, I kind of filled in the blanks but felt really sad, like there was a great opportunity that was missed at the end of that book. Maybe you were meant to feel like that though.

That sounds amazing - I want to read it!

SouthWestmom · 23/09/2015 07:08

Helena weird isn't it? I used to love Adele Parkes and now it reads like drivel

SouthWestmom · 23/09/2015 07:09

Go to the end and read the wanky bit though

ScrambledSmegs · 23/09/2015 09:39

Fatmomma it's worth reading for sure. I really liked it (apart from the end, obviously!).

HelenaDove · 23/09/2015 13:04

Noeuf i wonder whether its something to do with the change of publisher. Her earlier books were published by Penguin and then she got a deal with Headline.

mollyonthemove · 23/09/2015 19:11

I did enjoy girl on a train on the whole - agree about the drunken episodes - as a recovering alcoholic myself I felt cold reading them. It was just the ending. Very silly.

HelenaDove · 24/09/2015 16:22

Finished Men Ive Loved Before this morning. It did NOT get better.

SPOILER.

He gets her pregnant by pricking pinholes in the condom and she stays with him and has the baby.

Nowhere in the book is this acknowledged as reproductive coercion. Another supporting female character admits she came off the pill without telling her husband and Pinhole Guy sees this as an abuse of trust. But just acknowledges hes been a bit of a tosser when it comes to his own actions. Fair enough i know some blokes would think that way. But when the truth comes out he doesnt get called on it by any of the characters. Plus there is the emotional blackmail that Nat endures from her mum over her intention to have an abortion.

A novel with misogynistic undertones with an unrealistic ending.

lorelei9 · 26/09/2015 20:51

oh Helena, that sounds awful!

I also hated the end of F.G Cottam's Waiting Room. But the whole book needed more editing...and frankly the title was pretty reflective of the last half.

BobbyGentry · 08/01/2016 23:32

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden is not a true memoir and wasn't even written by a Geisha - fuming Angry

Blueandwhitelover · 09/01/2016 10:33

I thought the ice Twins ending was dire! It was a fairly good read but I was disappointed by he ending, it kind of felt like the author had gotten fed up writing it and just wanted to finish.

Bluecheese22 · 09/01/2016 13:05

Second ice twins! Read it last week and it was just dire.

hollowlegs · 09/01/2016 13:06

Life of Pi.

Crap ending to end all crap endings.

MrsHathaway · 09/01/2016 13:25

Mill on the Floss.

It was one of my A Level set texts. After about five hundred pages, just as it was getting interesting, it suddenly went ... ERM, THEN EVERYBODY DIED, THE END.

I was outraged. Then I had to spend another fucking term on the thing. And revise it.