With two Dewey readathons (and countless personal endeavors) under my belt, I know how difficult it is to keep one’s eyes open if you’ve been reading for around 20 hours. In such cases, I find it helpful to read mysteries, thrillers, and fiction that keeps me on my toes. I have a lot of respect for writers who can skillfully pace out a book so that the ending remains unpredictable and amazing. While I love a good book (read, romance) that ties itself together with a neat little bow at the end, I also enjoy messy endings where everything is suddenly not what it seems. Especially during readathons, I crave books that make me question everything and blow my mind at the very last second.
However, I often find my mind wandering and I end up imagining alternate endings to stories in my sleep-deprived brain. In that vein, my challenge for you is as follows:
What’s your favourite book? And if you could rewrite its ending and give it an unexpected twist, what would it be?
To participate, leave your answer in the comments along with a way of contacting you. The top two entries will be given a $10 Amazon.com gift card. I will draw the winners’ names at random and pass them along to the Dewey’s Readathon prize committee.
Good luck. Happy reading! May the odds be ever in your favor.
At Least I'm Well-Read 
This is a hard one – most of my favorite books are favorites because, tragic or beautiful, their endings just fit.
I’m going to pick a series that I don’t think I claim as a FAVORITE, exactly, but I did obsessively read the whole thing, and that’s the Twilight series. If I could re-write the ending, I would leave off the whole creepy Jacob imprinting thing and and somehow have Bella grow a spine and leave those two jokers! Hah!
elischulenburg@gmail.com
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My favorite book(s) is the Hunger Game trilogy. To twist the ending (which I in no way want to do), I could see martyring Peeta rather than Prim and ultimately Katniss ends up with Gale. Gale and Katniss end up as leaders of the country and Peeta is long remembered for his bravery in the revolution. [contact on Twitter: @SingerMezzo]
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The Hunger Games. Katniss wins. The end. I was so uninterested to see it turn into a larger narrative after the focus of the games. (Twitter @rob_nunn)
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My favorite book is Pride and Prejudice.
If I could rewrite it with a plot twist ending, I’d make Darcy and Bingley a secret couple. Bingley sells Netherfield to Colonel Fitzwilliam, and D & B go off to live at Pemberley together with Georgiana and maybe a few small dogs.
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My favorite book is Jane Eyre…but in my alternate ending, Jane would say see ya NEVER to Mr. Rochester because locking your wife in an attic is never the answer. Twitter: totallybooked
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My favorite book is Love to Water My Soul by Jane Kirkpatrick. I wouldn’t change a thing.
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My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird, and while I can’t imagine changing the ending of such a perfect story, the justice-seeking softie in me would have preferred Mayella Ewell and the courage to tell the truth and Tom Robinson had been aquitted and live a long, happy life with his family.
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I would rewrite the ending of the Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton. In the current version, the girls all separate after being successful at boarding school. They all have wonderful plans for the future including attending St. Andrews for Darrell and Sally. I think I would rewrite the ending to give a glimpse of how the distant future was. I would write about how the girls became volunteers during the war or another position of sensitivity and positive contributions. They would serve as nurses, secretaries…etc. Most of the girls in the books impressed me with how sensible but real they were. They had tempers but only lost them over serious things; I can easily see them helping in the war effort. I want people to see these wonderful characters helping with something essential so they will love them as I do.
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One of my favorite books is A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. I read it when I was in college and really enjoyed it. It was written beautifully and the words were twined lyrically together. But the ending was just sad. I’d rewrite it to have a happy ending (no character deaths). It wouldn’t quite be a “twist” (unless it suddenly became a paranormal fiction and he rose from the dead LOL), but it would definitely be a different ending than what it was.
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I love 13 reasons why and if I could change the ending, I would keep Hannah alive and just make it seem like she gave the tapes to all the people who have hurt her instead of the reasons why she killed herself.
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Oh man. This is difficult!
I think I’d go with Romeo and Juliet; He’ll think she’s dead, but before he goes and kills himself, he’ll see that it’s all a scam and thus they’ll live happily ever after and actually NOT die! How’s that for an alternate ending huh? I mean, it would make it a lot more of a happy love story instead of a tragedy.
Twitter : @boghunden
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It is very hard to pick one book as my favorite. If I could pick one book ( or series) that I loved, I would go with The Hunger Games series and I would definitely change the ending of Mocking Jay. Katniss would have ended up with Gale, and her sister never would have died.
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Oops. Forgot to leave a contact. My twitter handle is @banterbooks. Also, thanks so much for hosting. It was a fun challenge!
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I don’t really have alternate ending, but I do carry a story in my head where the caracters are still living and doing stuff. Which is probably why I prefer series of books. I can pick up learning more about the people I got so close to in the story.
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Oh man, I read Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay last Halloween, and I loved it! An adolescent boy goes missing in the woods while out cavorting with friends. The entire book was a cool combination of Paranormal Activity and Stranger Things, and it was awesome.
…..until the ending.
On the last like, two pages, the author sets the reader up for what seems like a plot twist…but really he just drops a strange letter on the main character’s mother (about which the contents we never learn…), and then she just walks out of her house, ending the book. It made no sense. I’m all for a vague ending, but this ending just….didn’t mean anything. I wish the book would have fully committed to the “horror/monster/paranormal” theme it set itself up to be and just revealed that the devil was at the root of the son’s disappearance (or something similar)…rather than what had actually happened to him. Of course, without me spoiling the book, it’s hard to describe exactly WHY it was an unsatisfying ending. Just take my word for it 😉
emails are welcome at shannriley@gmail.com !
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A recent read, “Mogworld” by Yahtzee Croshaw had a good ending. But if I could rewrite with an unexpected twist in mind, I would have had Jim and Meryl live together in the real world instead of being recreated in the code and going their separate ways.
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I can’t say that I have a single “favorite” but I did recently reread an old fave called The Mask of the Enchantress. Suewellyn Mateland is the illegitimate daughter of a woman who was having an affair with her cousin’s (and best friend’s) husband. When the affair is exposed, they flee to the other side of the world (with Suewellyn in tow) to live on a tropical island. As far as changing the ending goes I’d do this: once Suewellyn gets her happy ending with the man she loves and is reintroduced to the people she formerly knew as someone else, I’d have her discover that her parents had not perished on their island when the volcano (that was thought to be extinct) erupted out of the blue. Instead, they’d been off canoeing at the time. The volcanic eruption precipitated a tsunami that drove their canoe farther and farther out into the Pacific. They ended up landing on a deserted island where they survived until they were rescued five years later.
Twitter: @why_dee_7
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One of my favorite books is Amber Spyglass in the His Dark Materials series. If I could change the books, I would like to see a twist where people in the Oxford without daemons start to manifest them due to leaking over from Lyra’s world. That would increase the necessity to close the openings between worlds.
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Trick question! Who could pick just one favorite book?! But if I could change the ending of a book…It would be The Last of the Mohicans. I would keep Uncas alive so that his father wouldn’t be the literal last of the Mohican people (last can be plural!) It was so heart-wreching watching (in my mind) as he watched his son die and then later had to perform burial rites. I cried in the book, and I cry every time I watch the movie. Every time. Without. Fail. So yeah, I would change the ending to that book. And probably a bunch more and if I weren’t 20 hours in on a bad night’s sleep, lol!
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The Fall of Lisa Bellow by Susan Perabo
Plot twist, Lisa Bellow had actually managed to escape and was living in isolation with as a hermit for the rest of her adult life, and then about forty years later some vacationers (and Meredith happened to be in that group of people) come upon her habitat, and this case can be finally closed. You see, the ending of this book is very open to interpretation, although the author made it seem like she was very unlikely to survive, I would have liked the thought that it is possible to escape and be saved from this horrible situation, and that Meredith could finally have full healing.
Find me on Twitter @Mars_acearo
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I will say I have a favorite series. Harry Dresden by Jim Butcher. I don’t want to give any spoilers away, but I would love for him to get to have a happy ending, get married and have children.
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I don’t have one favorite book, but will choose The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Oscar survives his beating and returns to New Jersey and writing. Fast forward to 1917, and we are watching a series written by him on SCIFI. It is everything he wanted it to be. He changes his name to Oscar , which is why his life AS OSCAR is brief.
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I would love to rewrite Harry Potter and somehow allow for some of my most beloved characters to stay alive. Dobby and Dumbledore deserve to see Harry grow, and the Weasley’s need to be a complete ginger-headed famaily, again. Most of all, I would love to see Sirius returned and, he too, could be become the boy who lived.
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One of my favorite books is the time travelers wife. If I could change the ending, I would find a way to give Clare the same talent Henry has to revisit her memories, but I really think the original ending is beautiful.
Email is reviewsandreadathons@gmail.com
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My fav book is Mara und der Feuerbringer by Tommy Krappweis but as it’s a german trilogy and not translated into English by now (but the movie has Japanese dubbing, strange), I’ll pick one that might be more known to English readathoners as well.
So actually, I would rewrite the Harry Potter ending. Because Snape’s death has no purpose. All the others die fighting or for a higher cause, but he could have fulfilled his job without dying. So I’d rewrite it so that he knew what was about to come, which would actually be more in-character. He would have taken both blood replenisher and an antidote for Nagini’s poison. Maybe he’d be in a coma, smashing his head on the wall, but once they’ll find him, they only have to stop him from bleeding to death which would take a long time thanks to the blood replenisher.
And one day he’ll wake up from coma and everything will have changed for him. He’ll be free of the burden of being a spy, thanks to Harry. Maybe he’ll have to do community service hours for his crimes. I do believe that would actually be better for his psyche than just being ‘not guilty’, so that he actually gets a way to redeem himself for what he had to do as a spy, so he can learn to live with himself. It won’t be easy and he’ll need therapy, being completely independent for the first time in his life, but also being on his own. But afterwards? I don’t think he’ll grow to like Harry. But maybe Harry takes pity on him and does all he can so that Severus can lead a healthy, happy life. Maybe they’ll even find the ressurection stone in the forrest, so that Severus can finally make peace with Lily and say his goodbyes, so that he is free to find another love?
Okay, I have to admit, that would take a whole 8th book to write all that, but so what? 😀
Twitter: @zwiebelbaguette
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Some of my favourite books are the Harry Potter series, and what if Voldemort turned out to be Harry’s dad? Kind of like in Star Wars!
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I thought about this for a while and I figured my favourite book is Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. The Percy Jackson series is my all time favourite, so that would be my favourite book. I would change the ending in such a way that Percy Jackson suddenly had a half-brother or sister, being another child of his own mother. This would certainly give another twist at the book and the series, because there is suddenly another character that is important in the life of Percy.
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My favourite book is The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. If I could rewrite its ending and give it an unexpected twist, I would want Cora to experience more joy after all the trauma she survives through the novel. In real life, as in literature, black women’s stories are often filled with adversity so I would want Royal to survive and escape with her, for their love to result in future generations.
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My favourite series of all time is Harry Potter. However I’m happy with how the original series ended but I do hope Rowling would have written a whole novel about Cursed Child. That way the characters would feel more real and we’d get to know them better. So I’d rewrite the whole Cursed Child with more character development!
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Wurthering Heights. Everyone goes to group therapy and gets a prescription of Xanax.
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Isn’t this a spoiler alert challenge?
My favorite is A Monster Calls & too easy–his mom doesn’t die.
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