Atonement vs The Kite Runner

I finished Atonement last night and once it finally got around to the development of the crime it was so good! I also realised why I didn't like the Kite Runner. Both books involve a tragic betrayal by a child and the possibility of redemption. In the Kite Runner, though, every tragic event seemed to happen solely for the purpose of making the ending more perfectly fitting. As Meghan O'Rourke at Slate put it, the story was "studiously symmetrical". The character who did the betraying claims to feel bad about it, but he seems to ignore it to pursue his nice, happy life. There's no tension that doesn't fit the symmetry, and even that isn't exactly filled with suspense since it's predictable.
Atonement, on the other hand, was a much more complex story, with no nice, neat ending and therefore seemed much more realistic. I also enjoyed Briony's discovery of the merits of writing about everyday people's thoughts and feelings over melodrama, something the Kite Runner could have done better.