What’s my view on novels with cliffhanger endings?
This is an easy question.
I loathe cliffhanger endings. They feel like cheating, as though the author
I especially loathe cliffhanger endings in novels that are billed as romance. Tip: romances have to have a happy-ever-after ending, and a cliffhanger doesn’t meet that criteria.
My view is that a novel is like a movie: it has a start, a middle, and an end, and they all happen between the first and last pages. A cliffhanger ending feels like the author has cut the novel in two so they can sell more copies because they’ve hooked the reader.
Yes, a novel that’s part of a series can have a few loose ends that will be picked up in the next novel in the series, but each novel in the series should be complete.
In romance, this will mean that the hero and heroine get their happy ever after ending, but the novel might have an over-arching plot question that isn’t answered, or it might introduce the hero and heroine of the next book in the series.
That’s okay.
What isn’t okay is leaving the hero and heroine on opposite sides of Berlin as the Wall goes up (#TrueStory) or having them break up in the final chapter only to reunite and marry in the gap between the first and second books in the series (also #TrueStory).
