My Book Taste: Happy Or Sad Endings?

My taste in books is surprisingly amazing, of course, to me. Some of my friends think my book taste is weird, while others find it a little interesting. I find it surprisingly amazing because I am not static, meaning I am not the kind of reader who likes to focus on a particular genre for long. I like to jump from “one genre to another” as one of my friends likes to put it. I remember in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted. Interestingly, Greek mythology became my focus. I started by watching YouTube Videos explaining Odysseus, Zeus, and the like. Then, I upgraded my game by downloading many pages of these stories.

The rate at which I was consuming Greek mythology, one would think I would never drop it, at least not for a couple of years. It was safe to say I was “obsessed” with these stories. But to my surprise, before I knew it, I got tired of Greek myth and started reading a completely different genre; African novels. Sometimes, I ask myself “Who does that?” Who goes from reading the first alphabet to racing through the last? Well, that's me! This is exactly why my friends say my taste in books is weird. My taste when it comes to books changes. I could be reading this particular genre and the next day, I pick up another one.

However, one thing about my reading habits that I don’t think will ever change (at least for now) is the type of ending I crave. I don’t know if it works like this for other people, but I prefer sad endings. Happy endings are cliché to me. In one of the Hive Book Club hangouts, I told my fellow book lovers that I prefer novels with sad endings, and what they said got me laughing. They said I was scary and one of them even jokingly said they would start to avoid me.

Why exactly do I prefer sad endings? Don’t quote me wrong, I am not a psycho or anything, but as long as I know that the story is fictional, I love it when story writers do the unpredictable. I guess I love sad endings because I have read a lot of works with happy endings and then when I finally come across one that ends sadly, it stands out. I go “oh yes! Finally! Something different.”

Throughout my high school and even elementary school days, all the books and movies I watched always ended happily. For example, I used to watch a lot of cartoons and they all ended happily. The likes of Frozen, Moana, Tangled, The Croods, Home, and the like, all ended happily. Same thing with the literary works I read at the time. It got to a point where I started craving something different.

So yes, I don’t think it’s weird to prefer works with sad endings, at least once in a while. Now that I think about it, I believe one of the reasons why my favorite book still lives rent-free in my head is that it ended sadly.

What about you? What kind of endings do you like? The sad or the happy ones?