One of the weirdest (and maybe also oldest) examples of this is “Water Margin/Outlaws of the Marsh/All Men Are Brothers” (there are a couple of different names for the novel) from around 1524.
There is a cliffhanger at the end of almost every single chapter. And these are usually absolutely useless, oftentimes silly and cheap like in some really poor soap opera. For such an influential ancient novel (the Suikoden games are (very loosely) based on it) it’s partially written almost in a modern style but also very poorly. There are even more tropes to be found in the book like plot armor for almost all the 108 main characters or very unlikely coincidences.
“Imajica” by Clive Barker
I guess I’ve read the translated german version twice or even trice in my teens (when my english wasn’t really that good) and to get the pure experience I read the original version just some months ago.