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Your really annoying ending to a book?!

204 replies

Liltzero · 09/04/2023 15:55

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?

OP posts:
Latenightreader · 18/04/2023 16:56

I am still really cross about the ending to Miss Garnet's Angel. I loved the rest of the book, but the final chapter or so made me want to throw it across the room. It felt such a lazy, manipulative way to end it.

Gremlinsateit · 19/04/2023 14:25

2pence · 18/04/2023 08:32

That's not what happens though.

Spoilers for Life of Pi follow...

There is Pi's version of events and then there is what really happened. The animals weren't animals, they were other humans rescued from the boat and they acted as animals would to survive.

The orang-utan was Pi's mother who protected him from the hyena who was the cook who ate the poor zebra cabin boy alive. Pi survived because he found a tiger in the boat. Pi was the tiger and finally the tiger ran away as he was no longer needed to survive when his boat landed on a beach among civilisation again.

Pi told both versions to the police and the policemen chose to accept the story of the tiger, hyena, orang-utan and zebra rather than acknowledge what actually happened among shipwrecked humans.

Still not quite got my head around the island that absorbs people though. Anyone understand that part?

Show quote history

Disclaimer - I really disliked the ending of Life of Pi. That said, I think that the island is meant to suggest Eden, but it’s rotten at its core, and turns into a nightmare, because it floats - it’s not solidly based on truth, or Truth if you’re religiously minded. It presages the way that the beautiful fantastical story of the lifeboat turns into a horrific story of evil; and the teeth etc are a reference to the cannibalism.

Also, I don’t think it’s quite right to say that the horrific story is “what really happened” because the suggestion is that it’s just as easy to believe the beautiful story, so why not choose to believe in it, as an allegory of faith.

Rosebaywillow · 20/04/2023 19:28

The Time Traveller's Wife. To be fair, the whole story and the characters got on my wick, and the ending was laughable.

Thelastofbus · 20/04/2023 19:46

I hated the end of the book ‘my sisters keeper’. It was such a contrived ending. I have just read
the synopisis
of
the movie ending and I’m much prefer that.

Thelastofbus · 20/04/2023 19:58

I also hated the ending of the life of Pi. The book was magical and beautiful in parts. The ending spoiled it for me. I wanted it to be an incredible story about a boy and a tiger. I didn’t appreciate having it EXPLAINED to me at the end.

DoNutSweatTheSmallStuff · 27/04/2023 06:40

Currently reading Small Pleasures.
I'm enjoying it - but not sure I want to get to the end now...!?!

Kiitos · 27/04/2023 08:36

@DoNutSweatTheSmallStuff let us know what you think 😬

OneFrenchEgg · 27/04/2023 09:13

Life of Pi in the theatre was incredible. I loved the film as well. I thought the island was about giving up/losing the will to get home for short term pleasures.

Welshwabbit · 27/04/2023 11:53

I agree Stephen King is not great at ending his books, but I really like the ending to the Dark Tower series. I also liked the ending of A God in Ruins. I hate books with annoying endings, so much so that I think I filter them out of my brain, so whilst I can remember that the ending of Captain Corelli's Mandolin was one of the most irritating things I had ever read, I can't actually now remember why.

DoNutSweatTheSmallStuff · 02/05/2023 06:37

DoNutSweatTheSmallStuff · 27/04/2023 06:40

Currently reading Small Pleasures.
I'm enjoying it - but not sure I want to get to the end now...!?!

Finished it yesterday - without giving spoilers, the ending could have been happier!!
Kiitos

BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz · 02/05/2023 08:32

How To Kill Your Family. An easy read, very entertaining, raced through it. Don't know why they ended it that way. Introducing a new character right at the end I didn't care about, a set of ridiculous circumstances that seem totally unplausable, and suddenly ends with the devastation that she won't inherit when it never felt like she was driven by inheritance anyways.

Kiitos · 02/05/2023 22:16

@DoNutSweatTheSmallStuff haha absolutely! And I thought it was otherwise such a nice and well-written book!

FlameGrilledSquirrel · 03/05/2023 09:51

Servants of Twilight by Dean Koontz. Main story was excellent but the ending felt like his publisher had rang him and said it's got to be with them today.

Fair play to the people who actually finished Under The Dome. Tried and wanted to burn it.

DonnaGiovanna · 03/05/2023 10:06

I'm a bit disturbed at the number of these I have read and promptly forgotten the ending.

The most annoying ending of all time surely has to be The Mystery of Edwin Drood because it doesn't have one. A mystery within a mystery.

LittleLegsKeepGoing · 03/05/2023 10:29

Catch 22 - although the ending was no worse than the rest of the book in all fairness.

The Dark Tower - King knows people hate the way he ends some of his books, he even warns you in The Dark Tower to stop reading, just enjoy where the characters are and leave the rest in your head. Then stubborn buggers like me read to the end and are left fuming! Although I will concede re-reading the series makes the ending work so much better. Still annoys me though.

For anyone who thinks King can't end a story well should read The Long Walk or Running Man (not to be confused with the Arnie film that's based very loosely on the book). The ending for both of those is absolutely perfect!

HowardKirksConscience · 03/05/2023 22:03

SequinsandStilettos · 14/04/2023 11:26

Wrt How to kill your family. There was a thread on here about what constitutes homage and what is plagiarism.
Kind hearts and coronets screenplay 1949.
Copyright is 70 years.
I read some the updated Austens recently but that was very transparent and sold as such. I have no idea why How to kill your family got such great reviews.

Because her dad is Alan Rusbridger, ex-editor of the Guardian.

deeahgwitch · 18/03/2025 08:56

Deadringer · 14/04/2023 00:14

Strange Sally Diamond. I feel cheated by the ending.

Why @Deadringer?
I have just finished it.
I thought it was good.

Rowena191 · 18/03/2025 17:58

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. The one thing it didn't have was the sense of an ending. I practically threw it across the room.

lcakethereforeIam · 22/03/2025 01:47

The Magus by John Fowles. It's been decades since I read it so my memory is a bit fuzzy. Iirc it finishes, after all the weird stuff on the island, with the main character being pointed at in a park.

I also hated the book ending to My Sister's Keeper. The author's hand was too obvious and it actually seemed a bit of a cop out.

madamepresident · 22/03/2025 04:31

Maybe next time by Cesca Major… three my kindle on the table in disgust. Just petered out with no explanation

Clawdy · 22/03/2025 11:59

Most of Sophie Hannah's books have a really annoying ending!

PlasticBags · 22/03/2025 12:14

ErrolTheDragon · 14/04/2023 19:21

Mine is Charlotte Brontë's Villette. Not the ending we want, and then she makes it worse. Confused

I love the ending of Villette! Despite, yes, thinking ‘How could you, Charlotte?’ I think it’s beautifully done. And while teenage me sobbed into my pillow fifty-something me thinks Monsieur Paul, a despotic chronic people-pleaser in thrall to his long-dead fiancée’s family and his confessor, might have been a difficult spouse…

ChunkyMunck · 22/03/2025 12:52

‘The woman who went to bed for a year’ by Sue Townsend.

I felt the whole story was a bit ‘meh’ tbh but the ending was so flat.

Bruisername · 22/03/2025 13:00

The sequel to Death and the Penguin. Had such high hopes but just found it so disappointing

butter - such a heavily pushed book and just too long and the ending was just too🙄

thepariscrimefiles · 31/03/2025 11:58

ChessieFL · 10/04/2023 09:27

Tana French’s In The Woods. Took ages building up a particular plot point only to leave it completely unresolved. That annoyed me so much.

Absolutely agree. It was such a cop out. Normally in a psychological thriller/crime novel with a supposedly supernatural event, the reveal shows how the seemingly impossible was actually possible and explains what really happened.

John Dickson Carr was the master of this sort of reveal with his 'locked room' mysteries, as was G K Chesterton with his Father Brown stories.