How could they do this to me?!

There seems to be a new trend in the world of book publishing. Am I the only one who finds it excruciatingly irritating?

You start reading a novel. You get into the plot, you feel for the characters, you really care about what's going on and how it's going to end.

Then suddenly, when you think you've still got a good twenty pages to go, without any warning whatsoever, the story ends.

Why? Because they've decided to give you a taster of the next novel in the series, so the last chunk of the book is actually not part of the novel you were reading - it's the first chapter of a different story.

I've sort of managed to get used to it with the Alexander McCall Smith books - once bitten etc. And anyway those aren't the sort of novels that get you too emotionally involved, they're more light entertainment, though very good light entertainment.

But last night I went to bed with The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks - unusual in that it is a really good love story written by a man - and I thought I knew where I was because I'd actually noticed when buying the book that there was one of these tasters at the end, and had taken the precaution of marking the page where that bit started so that I would know how long till the end. But no, they had fooled me! Because this turned out to be a special book club edition with a whole section of author's Q&A, plus suggested questions for discussion. So about forty pages out of the book are actually not part of the novel.

I was stunned when this happened. There I was, looking forward to a good chunk of reading, and suddenly - THE END! I think they should put a warning on the first page of such books: the novel part of this book ends on page 283.

I mean, it was a lovely ending, but I just wasn't emotionally ready for it.

Is it just me?