{WR} Killing Off A Main Character--Yes? No? Maybe So? {Blogging from A to Z Challenge}

I was hopping around the blog verse on Saturday and came across someone who talked about Harry Potter and asked what our favorite scenes were. I couldn't pick just one, but the quote and scene she talked about was when Snape showed Dumbledore his patronus.

SPOILER ALERT for Harry Potter and the book "One Day" by David Nicholls.

This got me thinking about when Dumbledore died. How I cried at that scene but knew it had to happen. However, in my opinion,  JK Rowling did what she had to do and I could see the value in it especially when everything was revealed at the very end.

Now, we are to the letter "K" and I was thinking about the books where killing off a main character has worked and where it hasn't. One book in particular had me so pissed off if I didn't revere books, I would have hauled it across the room at the wall. "One Day" by David Nicholls was a pretty good read until the very end where Em, the main female character, gets hit by a car and dies. I could not believe it...what was he thinking? I couldn't see past the fog of my own sadness and anger as to why Nicholls chose to do end the book that way.  I will not be able to read it again and I didn't see the movie.

Another book, that I admittedly didn't read but my kids did, was the third book in the "Divergent"series. They told me who died in that one and all three of my kids were pretty angry and upset; I have no idea if it fit into the story line or not as I only read the first two.

"The Elegance of the Hedgehog" has a similar theme as well and I'm still trying to make up my mind about a main character dying in that book. And I read it over five years ago!

In my series, "Lane Changes", I was hit one day with the thought: "I have to kill off a character" and I tried to avoid it. I really did but in the end it had to happen. For three days I wrote this person's death scene to certain songs and I cried. I was slightly depressed I had to do this...so after I got the scene down I stopped writing for a few days to recover. Then I went back and each time I read that scene, the ones before and after it I realized..this is what has to happen! I don't cry, but I do tear up, when I read/edit it now. I wonder what my publisher will think when she gets to that part?

Have you ever come across a book where a major character was killed off? Do you think it worked? Why or why not?