Your really annoying ending to a book?!

[Liltzero]

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?

@Arran2024 if you Google it there’s an additional chapter which was the original ending to Picnic but was removed before publication. It makes the ending less ambiguous but that’s not necessarily better!

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. A book of epic proportions that really gets you hooked nad then a terrible ending that leaves you not knowing what on earth the conclusion is

@ChessieFL agree, the editor who decided to cut that last chapter made a very good call! :)

Still angry about this ten years after I read it

I agree with this. I read it quite recently and found the end so irritating. I also read the sequel to Jacqueline Wilson's 'Girls' trilogy called 'Think Again.' She didn't tie up so many loose ends! It was as if she had reached a word limit and cut it short.

The Last House on Needless Street. Was such a good book up till the extremely unconvincing ending!

I thought it was a bit grim when I read the book as a child!

@Rowena191 I really disliked that book and can't even remember why!

I've never read another by the same author because of it.

I always thought the end of Mockingjay (3rd of original Hunger Games series) annoyed me as it seemed like the author had been told they only had 2,000 words left to finish off the book and rushed the ending.. sort out several loose ends in a letter, then have people move to an area to live by themselves with no suggestions as to how they fed themselves, had heating or lighting, medical care etc

Behind Her Eyes was so utterly ridiculous that I both loved and hated it! Felt like a complete U turn on a sensible story.

A recent book being pushed a lot was Butter

i enjoyed it despite the length but the ending was such twee bollocks

The Mill on the Floss. Story, story, story, story….meh, run out of ideas so there’s a sudden flood and they get washed away. The end.

Cockoo Calling, first Cormoran.Strike book. Unnecessary clever-clever twist. I would have preferred any of the other options even if there had been plausibility holes.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. I can still remember being very cross but not the specifics. If I recall correctly it felt too neat and like a disappointing cop out.

Ohh gosh, I read it 5 years ago and I'm still angry about it! I still think about it from time to time 😒

Recently I read the Blackwater saga (by Michael McDowell,): WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT that ending!!

Also "Villette": Charlotte makes us suffer with no reason with that ending!

Memoirs of a Geisha. The most amazing book. Until the end. I was gutted.

I would add Lessons in Chemistry. It started out as an interesting tale about a neuro diverse female scientist navigating sexism in the 60s and itxwas like someone else wrote the second half, with the ending all tied up in a bow.

The Chrysalids, John Wyndham

Great book, but tied up in about 2 pages. It deserved better.

I was expecting it to end with ‘and they all lived happily ever after’ it was so ridiculous (lessons in chemistry)

I hated what they did to my sister's keeper 🙁 yes they should have followed the book

Just rereading this has made me angry about that bloody book 😁

Having said that, I'm an author and currently finishing a novel and MY GOD, the last 5000 words are the worst. It's tortuous. I can completely see the appeal of 'it was all was all a dream' (I won't, obviously. But I can see the appeal).

I haven’t RTFT, but for me it is Jane Eyre. I loved the book as a teenager and read it again when I was older and wiser. All the way through she is quite a strong character and in the end he only puts up with her because a)he’s blind and therefore can’t see she isn’t pretty and b)he needs someone to look after him. I’m sure someone will come along and tell me some alternative reasoning, but I was so angry with him for taking advantage and her for capitulating!

Bel canto by Anne Patchett. Great up until the epilogue

My Lover's Lover - Maggie O'Farrell. Just kind of ends with no explanation other than for one character. In fact I really wish I hadn't bothered.

I thought the ending linked well with the beginning.
This is my interpretation (which could be all wrong and not what the author intended at all) :
The book opens with an incident on the news about a murder/suicide locally.
In our modern world sadly this is an occasional occurrence.
We hear of such things but don’t know the events in the family’s life that preceded it.
But in The Bee Sting, we do.
I wasn’t mad about the book but the idea was good.