Dear reader,

If you were searching for the next book to read and found this particular one, then the first thing you need to know is that the book you are holding in your hands is the penultimate book you should abandon. This book narrates the penultimate chronicle of the Baudelaire orphans' lives and includes a penultimate dose of wretchedness, despair, and misery.

Surely the penultimate things you would want to read about are not a harpoon gun, a sunbathing area on a rooftop, two mysterious initials, three missing triplets, a notorious villain, and a dreadful curry.

The penultimate things are the first ones to avoid, so allow me to recommend that you put this penultimate book first on the list of books to avoid and find another penultimate book, such as the penultimate book of another chronicle or a chronicle that contains other penultimate things, so that this penultimate book is not the last book you will read.

With all my respect,

Lemony Snicket