Six for Sunday today is all about those series that pulled my heart out and stomped all over it, that left me devastated, that didn’t confirm to HEA in the traditional sense. I’ve also added in a couple of standalone’s to round out the six and This post is going to be full of spoilers unsurprisingly so if you’ve not read, Crooked Kingdom, Kindom of Ash, Allegiant and Darkdawn, the others i’ve managed to keep spoiler free.

Crooked Kingdon by Leigh Bardugo

This remains one of my favourite duologies of all time, but honestly the loss of Matthias broke my heart and the thing that got to me most about it was that he didn’t need to die, the only minor failing in these books for me is that it felt like he got picked as probably the least favourite of the group as one of them needed to die. It wouldn’t be realistic for all of them to make it out ok, yet with YA and Fantasy there is that pass.  I know that much of the Nina’s arc in King of Scars relies stems from that death but doesn’t mean that I am okay with it.

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas

I make no secret that SJM is able to emotionally ruin me pretty much all the time but forgetting about the last bit where everything got tied up in a neat little bow, we have the battle and in the flip to how I felt about Crooked Kingdom, I honestly thought we would lose more in this final epic showpiece. The one that broke my heart the most? The Thirteen, in a wonderfully gutwrenching selfless act born out of years of hidden cruelty, their combined loss was one of those moments when I just had to close the book and sit.

Allegiant by Veronica Roth

I have to say that one of my guilty pleasures are the Divergent films, I honestly don’t mind them and I watched them before I read the books so I had no preconceptions, so when I discovered that the film ending was very different from the book ending it hit me even harder. The loss of Tris hit me so hard, I honestly felt bereft at that ending and whilst many have said that the short story at the end of Carve the Mark helped them, it didn’t for me and I still feel that loss hard.

Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff

So we knew that Darkdawn was going to be the tale of Mia’s death but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with. However the main thing that totally destroyed me was Tric. Honestly that guy pulled himself out of the realm of the dead to find his love, shacked up with the woman who killed him. Unpopular opinion is that I do no ship Mia and Ashlinn at all, I am totally team Tric and after everything he did, to have his story end in that utterly bleak and unfeeling way was just devastating.

The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffernegger

We know from the very start that things aren’t going to work out well, but the sotry of how that point is reached is just devastating. I have to say I have never seen the film so I don’t know how heavily the romance impacts upon the science fiction. There are parts of the story that are triggering now for me but previously this was one of my most re-read books because I’m obviously a glutton for punishment, gets me in the ugly cry everytime.

Utterances by Jo Michaels

Words can heal, but the terrible toll of a magical book makes this both an uplifting example of human sacrifice but also that when you open a Pandora’s box you never know what will be unleased. This really was a harrowing read at times and left me in floods at the simple and haunting ending.