Hey Reader,

Some stories don’t end the way we want.

The hero doesn’t win. The team comes up short. The underdog pushes all the way to the edge—and still loses.

I’ve been thinking about this while working through The Count of Monte Cristo and watching my team's March Madness run end in heartbreak. Two very different stories, same uncomfortable truth: sometimes the most meaningful endings aren't the happy ones.

In both basketball and literature, we’re trained to expect certain outcomes. The underdog triumphs. Justice prevails. Good conquers evil. But the most memorable stories often break those rules.

The Count has been tedious at times. But when it gets going, it really gets going—high-velocity chapters and elegant interconnections. The kind of book that reels you back in, even after slow progress.

But it’s not tidy. Not emotionally, not morally. And that’s part of what makes it great.

It reminds me that some books set you up for a fairy-tale arc—then twist the ending. Or refuse to wrap things in a bow. Some stories leave you with loss. With complexity. With grief and awe and unresolved ache.

And right now, those messy endings feel especially relevant. In a time when AI promises perfect solutions and social media sells curated happiness, there’s something powerful about stories that dare to end in discord, in complexity, in truth rather than satisfaction.

I'm still about 90 minutes away from finishing The Count, and I'm nervous. Not that it will end badly—but that after 1200 pages of moral complexity and devastating consequences, it might try to wrap everything up in an artificially neat bow. After watching a character orchestrate such magnificent destruction in the name of justice, a tidy "happily ever after" would feel like a betrayal.

stories that go deep into the mess earn the right to stay there. When a book spends hundreds of pages exploring the brutal cost of revenge and the human capacity for both justice and cruelty, it owes us something more honest than fairy-tale redemption.

That kind of story might not give you the ending you thought you wanted. But it gives you something better: the truth about who we are, what we're capable of, and how we live with the consequences.

Whatever challenge you're facing this weekend, let it be messy. Let it matter. That’s how we find what’s real.

If you’re reading something right now that’s refusing to end “the right way,” I’d love to hear about it.

—Tracy

P.S. If you're thinking about taking on The Count of Monte Cristo, translation matters. I tried 3 or 4 free Kindle versions of the book and it was tough slogging. The Penguin Classics edition translated by Robin Buss was so much easier to read.

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