I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
This Movie Doesn't End the Way We Want by Hailey Piper Published by Titan Books on September 15 2026
Genres: Adult, Horror
Pages: 320
Format: Finished paperback
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: An interesting set-up and lots of eerie ambiance couldn’t quite elevate this above “just OK” for me.
I have to give Hailey Piper credit for coming up with a unique idea, despite my overall opinions about This Movie Doesn’t End the Way We Want. I’m a big fan of the cursed movie trope, and I’ve read quite a few of them over the years, so of course I wanted to check this out.
The story follows Val, a forty-something tattoo artist whose life was changed forever when she was fifteen. Back in 1994, Val, her little sister Ashley and their friend Colette saw a limited release horror movie called Blood-Curse of the Toad Man. Val took a restroom break in the middle of the movie, only to return to an empty theater. Ash and Colette were gone, and even after the police got involved, the girls were never found. Val’s parents blamed her for Ashley’s disappearance, and she’s lived with that guilt ever since.
Thirty years later, Val is visited by a true crime podcaster named Kate, who is digging into the mystery of Ashley’s and Colette’s disappearance, which was never solved. Val isn’t happy about Kate bringing up her painful past, but then weird things start happening. Val thinks she sees the “man” who was in the theater with them all those years ago, a strange, menacing figure in a trench coat and hat. Was he responsible for their disappearance? And why is Val hearing the song about the Toad Man from the movie? When a friend of Val’s goes missing, she knows that the movie is back to take more victims.
Piper creates a very creepy atmosphere with the lore surrounding the movie and whether or not it’s a movie at all, or rather an evil force that takes on the guise of a movie to trap its victims. It was a fun idea, as Val runs into roadblocks when she tries to research the film’s history—especially the fact that it doesn’t seem to exist at all! She connects with an old school friend named Roxie, whose father owned and operated the movie theater back in 1994, to help her dig into the movie’s origins. Roxie spends quite a bit of time in online forums, looking for any mention of Blood-Curse and eventually finds a few leads. The mystery of the film was probably the most interesting part of the book for me, and I really enjoyed spending time with Roxie in particular.
I also liked the sense of nostalgia in the story, especially Val’s love of movies and how they came to be an escape from her awful childhood (her parents are truly terrible!). Piper’s descriptions of the dark theater, the sticky floors and the excitement when the movie starts all reminded me of my own childhood experiences at the movies. And when the creeping dread starts up, the nostalgia turns dark, and I thought it was so well done.
However. There were a few things that were complete misses for me. First, I do not care for the author’s writing style at all. Many sentences didn’t make sense to me (“She only squinted as the warming downpour batter her head, focusing on the dingy tiles in a conscious effort toward anti-contemplation.”), and having to read a sentence over and over to try to figure out what the author was saying took me completely out of the story. Lots of readers love her books, so it’s probably personal preference, but it made the book very hard to get through.
The story is also confusing and silly at times. The “monster” (for lack of a better term) comes to be called “the Unreality Toad” by Val and the others, so I’m assuming the tall figure wearing a trench coat represents the toad man of the title. Multiple side characters, all related to Val in some way, come and go throughout the story, and it was very hard to tell them apart. Val is having weird dreams and then seems to experience them while she’s awake, and I always struggle with stories that revolve around dreams, so those parts went right over my head. And what I thought was going to be a cursed movie story turned out to be something else entirely. Even the ending was vague. Something happens to Val but I’m still not sure I understood what that was.
Overall, This Movie Doesn’t End the Way We Want was just OK for me, although many readers seem to love it, so do check it out, especially if you’re a fan of the author.
With thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.
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