Response to Eamon's post.

So in one of my favorite books of all time The Book Thief the main character and all her friends die. Yet for some reason this didn't bother me. Maybe that's because something I hate more then anything else, is when a book that's not in a series ends with "So and So walked into the sunset, never turning back." For me that is so frustrating. Making up an ending in your mind isn't as satisfying as having an author write one. 

A death at the end of a book finalizes it, concludes it nicely. What if Harry Potter had ended with both Voldemort and Harry alive? What if Lord of the Rings had ended with the ring undestroyed? While these endings were both happy, I would have been Equally satisfied if Harry died, but not Voldemort.

There's nothing worse for me than closing a book, looking up, and having to think So, what happened then?  Sad endings usually have more of a finish to them. When we reread happy endings the question of the ending always nags us. When we reread sad endings the question is answered again in full.