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@corkybookworm Oh, awesome! Have you read Shea’s Red Rope of Fate yet? The ebook is currently free on Amazon! 😀

The characters didn’t learn their lessons and so the ending was extremely dissatisfying, though I’m not sure I would call it cliche…Hmm…

I definitely think there can be a difference between cliche endings and dissatisfying endings. I wouldn’t call the ending to Girl in the Red Hood cliche by any means, but it was highly dissatisfying to me. When I think “cliche,” I typically think “stereotypical” and “shallow.” “Dissatisfying” can include “cliche,” but perhaps it can go too far in the opposite direction, as well. I’m likely to call “dissatisfying” anything from acclaimed classics, like all those Greek tragedies, to tons of short stories that end with an emotional gut-punch instead of a burst of sunshine. xD And you brought up the Hunger Games trilogy, which millions of people love and find meaning in, but which can also turn off countless readers because of the high cost and/or other factors. (It’s been a while since I read the series, and I think I mentally “checked out” near the end, too, but I’ll keep this spoiler-free. xP)

You can probably tell by now that I adore happily-ever-afters. Very, very seldom am I satisfied with anything less. However, there is one book, Coralina by Anita Valle, that ends with the heroine getting comeuppance (SPOILER, someone does to her what she has done to countless others, END SPOILER), and I appreciate that book from start to finish. It makes certain promises in the beginning of the story and then delivers on those promises in a way I found incredibly satisfying. That being said, I finished the book knowing it’s part of a series and hoping that Coralina’s comeuppance is only the first step in the long journey that will eventually (hopefully!) lead to her happily-ever-after. If I didn’t have the hope of a happy ending eventually, I would probably label the book as dissatisfying, no matter how much the heroine deserved what happened.