The Most Unhinged Spicy Romantasy Cliffhangers That Literally Had Me Sobbing 😭🦇

Welcome back to the blog besties!

Grab your tissues and your favorite emotional support bookmark because today we are choosing pure violence. Kirsty and I finally sat down at the mics for Season 5 Episode 3 of Two Girls One TBR to air out our deepest literary traumas. We love morally gray men and we love high spice with suffocating tension but authors have gotten far too comfortable committing emotional warfare right at the very end of a book. Are cliffhangers a sign of pure genius storytelling or are authors just toying with our sanity to guarantee preorders? We put the worst offenders on trial and honey some of these endings deserve a life sentence in literary prison. We do we love every second of it, absolutely!

But before we get to the books that ruined our lives we have to take a quick detour to The DNF Court because I have to talk about what absolutely steamed my bun this week.

The DNF Court: ARC Sellers ⚖️😡

Kirsty and I were talking about this on the episode and I am still so incredibly mad about it. People are out here getting physical ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) from publishers and then turning around and selling them online!

Okay let me clarify something real quick because I know someone is going to be in the comments about it. Technically speaking under the "first sale doctrine" in United States copyright law, it is not actually a statutory crime to sell a physical ARC once you own it. It is your physical property. But just because you can legally do something does not mean you should!

Selling an ARC is a massive disrespect to the authors who pour their blood, sweat, and tears into these stories. These are completely free promotional copies that literally say "not for resale" right on the cover! When you sell them on secondary sites for a profit, the author gets absolutely zero royalties. It hurts creators so much, especially our favorite indie authors who pay out of pocket to print and ship those early copies to build hype.

Plus the publishing industry keeps watch lists! If a publisher tracks a sold ARC back to you, you will be permanently blacklisted from ever getting early copies again, and platforms like PangoBooks will rip your listings down immediately because selling unreleased titles violates their policies. (And just a reminder that selling digital advance copies actually is piracy and copyright infringement, so just do not do it!)

If your physical TBR cart is overflowing and you finish reading an ARC, you can drop it in a little free library, or host a free giveaway, or pass it along to a book bestie. Do not try to make a profit off an author's hard work. Straight to the grave with all of you ARC sellers!

🧪 The Potion: The Page 499 Flatline

Okay now that I have that out of my system we cannot begin putting toxic endings on blast without our signature drink reveal! For this episode we created The Page 499 Flatline.

It is dark and bittersweet and built specifically for that gut punch moment when you swipe your Kindle screen or turn the physical page at 3 AM... only to realize there is no next page. Just author acknowledgments staring back at your hollow weeping soul.

Ingredients:

2 oz Spiced Rum (swap for spiced apple cider syrup for a mocktail)
1.5 oz Tart Cherry Juice
0.5 oz Fresh Lime Juice
Top with Ginger Beer
Black shimmer syrup or black sugar for the rim
Ice cubes

Instructions:

Rim your cocktail glass with a lime wedge and roll it right into that gorgeous black sugar.
Fill the glass to the brim with ice cubes.
Pour in your spiced rum and tart cherry juice and fresh lime juice and then stir gently.
Top it off with a heavy generous splash of ginger beer for that spicy little kick!

A massive toast to the authors who clearly derive pleasure from our suffering! 🥂✨

🔪 The Cliffhanger Court: Putting Endings on Blast

There is a massive difference between a clever hook that leaves you smiling and an ending that feels like a literal slap in the face. We broke down the worst ways authors shatter our souls into four distinct categories of emotional devastation. Again we are all here for this 💯!

1. The Ultimate Betrayal

The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent: Oraya and Raihn ruined lives with this one. You spend the entire brutal tournament holding your breath while they claw their way toward each other and the tension is thick and the spice is earned... and then the finale hits and the loyalties completely flip. True throwing the Kindle across the room energy!

2. The Severed Bond and Stolen Safety

Rain of Shadows and Endings by Melissa K. Roehrich: Melissa is the absolute queen of building suffocating tension. You spend the whole book begging for a shred of peace for these characters and the exact second you think they are safe the ground collapses beneath them.
Blood & Betrayals by Jeanette Rose and Alexis Rune: That terrifying stalker cliffhanger gave us legitimate heart palpitations! Summer makes the most reckless chaotic decision to run away and it leaves the reader completely spiraling.

3. The Ticking Clock and Gothic Dread

Anathema & Eldritch by Keri Lake: Pure atmospheric anxiety. The sheer panic of running out of time in the mortal lands before the madness fully takes over is unhinged. The wait for me to read the final book is a slow torture all on its own.
Heart of the Raven Prince by Parker A. Garner: Parker sets up the high stakes of the universe so perfectly and ends on total gothic dread.

4. The Brutal Emotional Drop

Your Path is Sorrow by Parker A. Garner: Parker does not just write stories because she emotionally damages her readers in the best way possible. The pure emotional wreckage of this ending completely destroys you.
Quicksilver by Callie Hart: Pulling the rug out from under the reader in the final chapters practically forces you to immediately pick up the next book. The definition of a book hangover.

🩸 Kirsty’s Hit List: Endings That Broke Her Brain

If you watch our video episodes over on YouTube you already know we flash the book covers right on screen so you can track the madness in real time. Kirsty brought some heavy hitters to the table that had both of us screaming:

Iron Flame & Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros: The absolute devastation of Xaden Riorson at the end of Iron Flame.
Metal Slinger & Daggermouth: Deep and gritty and completely unapologetic with their ending tension.
House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J. Maas: Bryce Quinlan landing right in front of the Night Court while we had to sit and wait two whole years for the crossover aftermath. Pure author audacity!

⚖️ The Spice o Meter: The Interrupted Burn

We had to bring the hammer down in Trope Trial this week. What is the absolute worst crime an author can commit on the Spice o Meter?

The Interrupted Burn.

You endure 800 pages of agonizing slow burn. The filthy banter and the near touches and the tension so thick you cannot breathe. Then they finally cross the line and the clothes start coming off and the spice is spicing at maximum heat... and BAM. Someone gets kidnapped or the castle gets attacked! Straight to jail!

⚡ Rebecca's Radar: Surviving the Rest of the Year

Looking ahead at our chaotic physical TBR carts there are so many upcoming romantasy and dark fantasy releases that have us absolutely terrified. Are we going to stop reading unfinished series to protect our peace? Absolutely not. We are going to walk straight into the fire every single time because we clearly have zero survival instincts when it comes to fictional men with wings and shadows.

Catch the full unhinged debate on the latest episode of Two Girls One TBR! You can stream us right now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or watch our expressive stressed out faces over on YouTube.

Make sure you come hang out with us inside our private Instagram broadcast channel The Coven's Cocktail Club over at @twogirlsonetbr and @azrellareads! Slide into our comments and tell us what cliffhanger permanently altered your brain chemistry!

Goodnight Book Babes.

Disclosure: Episodes and blog posts feature a rotating mix of personal purchases, library reads, and gifted review copies (ARCs) discussed by hosts and guests. Moving forward, any specifically highlighted review copies are explicitly disclosed during the audio episode.

Two Girls, One TBR