Go Set a Watchman hit by printing error as readers report missing lines in Harper Lee book

Imagine getting to the end of the To Kill a Mockingbird follow-up and...oh

Go Set a Watchman has been flying off the shelves since its release on Monday (Getty Images)

Some unlucky readers will have sped through Go Set a Watchman this week, only to find that the final pages are garbled.

Harper Lee's hotly-awaited To Kill a Mockingbird follow-up was published at midnight on Monday, with many fans queuing to get their hands on the very first copies.

But now, publisher Penguin Random House has revealed that a misprint in a "limited number" of the initial 25,000 UK editions led to two sentences missing on six pages towards the end of the book.

Five things we learn from Go Set a Watchman

It remains unclear exactly how many are affected but it was due to a technical fault at printer Clays, The Bookseller reports.

"Due to an error in the printing process a limited number of copies of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman are faulty," a statement from Penguin read. "Replacement copies are currently being printed and the situation will be resolved swiftly."

Amazon, which sold many of the misprinted copies, emailed customers who had purchased the novel and offered free replacements to anyone with missing text. Any orders placed on Amazon after 16 July will not have misprints and Waterstones stock was unaffected.

Readers have not reacted well to the news, with some expressing their frustration and "incredible disappointment" on social media.

The long lost manuscript for Go Set a Watchman was discovered in a safety deposit box by Lee's lawyer last summer after the author wrote it in the Fifties, some five years before Mockingbird was published.

Reviews have been mixed, with hero Atticus Finch's new status as a racist sparking controversy among the literary world, but the book has already proved a hit with first day sales topping 105,000 print and ebook copies.