Have you watched “How I Met Your Mother”? Endings matter quite a bit, to the point of completely ruining all that came before it. I’m sure I’ve read a few books that did the same.

Endings are the most important part of the story IMO. If you don’t stick the landing on themes and character journeys, then I find the entire story unsatisfying.

I can't talk about IT, but an ending can be unsatisfactory in so many ways. Whether it is a more classic trope, f.e. " it was only a Dream" or turning a comedy into a tragedy, both without proper foreshadowing, or it is too abrupt, all that can throw a reader out of a book, they enjoyed until then.

An ending is very important. I can forgive it, if a book starts a bit slow or is a bit weaker in the middle. I can't forgive a bad ending. In the former case, I can power through to the good parts or just don't finish. No hard feelings, someone surely loves it. But a bad ending, when the rest was fine? That sticks with me and feels like a betrayal. I liked you, you book and then you let me down? Nope. Bye.

A bad ending can completely spoil my enjoyment of a book. I like crime/thrillers as my commuting books, and in the last month I've read two books where the narrator turned out to be unreliable - and the perpetrator - in the last few pages. With very few if any indications beforehand. And in one case, not only was the narrator revealed to be unreliable, but the book finished without actually clearing up whether the narrator had committed the murder or not. I nearly threw my kindle across the room.

It's not that I don't like unreliable narrators or ambiguous endings, it's more when the ending is so completely unexpected and doesn't fit with the rest of the story.

A shitty ending can sour my overall thoughts on the story. I hated the ending of IT. It turned me off of Stephen King tbh.

They are very important but there’s some wriggle room. I can stomach a mediocre ending (like the one in It) if the rest of the book was good.

I'm not going to ruin IT for you but when people complain about its ending they are complaining about one particular scene near the end. The end minus that scene is great, it's that scene that ruins it. It's so infamous and hated that all you have to do is say that scene from a Stephen King and they know your talking about IT. If you don't know it already you will when you get there. There will be zero doubt in your mind that its the scene we all hate once you read it. Otherwise ITs ending is good. What King gets ragged on a lot is that his endings drag on way too long or his Dark Tower ending which I think is brilliant but many hate.

The only example of this I have is when I read Anna Karenina (by choice) the summer after 8th grade. Took me freaking forever because it’s a giant book and I kept having to re-check it out from the library. The outcome at the end of the main character pissed me off so bad and I felt like I wasted all that time for the ending to just be what it was. I’ve never forgotten it and anytime anyone mentions that book I tell them that story lol.

It matters to me, but it’s not necessarily the end-all-be-all of my enjoyment. It’s one of the parts of the whole.

If it was bad enough, though, I really can feel cheated.

Gone Girl

I am filled with rage even typing it, and I read it when it first came out.

If it was an actual book, and not my kindle I would have destroyed it.

No, I am not usually an angry person.

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Depends on the story. It matters a lot more to me if I'm reading crime fiction than it does with sci-fi or fantasy.

The ending of IT was terrible.