Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Sunrise on the Reaping (a Hunger Games Novel) by Suzanne Collins

444 reviews

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Broke my heart I love Haymich more than ever now 😭

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Wees voorbereid op emotionele schade! Dit boek heeft me gesloopt! Je krijgt zoveel empathie voor Haymitch en zoveel afkeer richting Snow. Ik heb het echt met Haymitch te doen! En ondanks de emotionele schade ben ik Suzanne Collins dankbaar voor dit boek. Voor de achtergrond van Haymitch's doen en laten in de oorspronkelijke trillogie.

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The Hunger Games books get harder and harder to read the older I get. Suzanne Collins never fails to hit. I knew exactly what was going to happen since we get a recap in Catching Fire- you know that Haymitch is going to survive, but that made all those deaths so much harder. The writing/pacing of the book wasn’t amazing, but Collins brings out raw emotion and horror through the plot.

In terms of what this means for us as a society- Luigi Mangione read Hunger Games as a child is all I’m saying. 

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

ok i'll just get it out of the way right off the bat and say it was disappointing to me that suzanne returned to first-person narration for this. her prose in the ballad of songbirds and snakes was certainly not brilliant either, but it did significantly help mask her limitations with the facility of language. i've certainly read far worse written first-person stories (hello, twilight) but you've got to be soooooo good at writing for it to be not irritating on any level, even when the story is good.

which, of course, is the saving grace of the hunger games. it really might be the best story in YA lit of all time. i called for her to write a new book centering on haymitch's games not too long before it was actually announced, and i'm very pleased that i was so right for that. i don't think it was absolutely brilliant or anything, and though i've rated it a half star higher than TBOSAS i might still actually like that book better, but i think it was a very satisfying return to panem and re-contextualization of haymitch's character all the same. so i simply don't really get many of the criticisms i've seen of the book, to be honest. personally i'm happy to see suzanne keep writing new stories in panem for as long as she sees fit, though at this point i'd have no clue where she would set another full-scale novel now that we've run out of district 12 victors to use. i've said this before too, but maybe she could do novellas of the games of the former victors we saw in the original trilogy? or something that explores the underground formation of the rebellion? (those things could probably be combined somehow as i think about it?) something explaining how panem came to be? although the ambiguity of that i think has always been intentional, so that might be too much to hope for.

anyways! point is, though full books might be difficult to execute at this point, i'd take anything she wanted to give. so i'm just continuing to put that energy out there 👀

finally. sending all my forever love and adoration to lucy gray baird, who i was not expecting to still haunt the narrative this much forty years later, and was so pleasantly surprised to find was still basically an active character in this book. she is still alive out there in the woods i just know it!

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adventurous dark sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

this book was the most gut wrenching of all the hunger games books. I could rate this either 5⭐️ or non at all because of how devastated this left me. 
Suzanne Collins better sleep with one eye open tonight. 

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I doubt I will be able to touch on anything that hasn't already been said in other reviews, but I think this book is worth the read. I have read the trilogy over a decade ago, now, and have NOT read Ballad. But Haymitch has always been my favourite character, and I had always wondered what exactly brought him to the very grim temperament he had at the start of the 74th games.

To say this book is sad is putting it mildly. It isn't even that the deaths are more profound than any other death in Suzanne Collins repertoire of breaking our hearts, but rather it feels worse to us, the reader, because of the heavy dramatic irony. We know how each of those characters is going to end up 25 years from now, but what we didn't know was how everything could come together almost seamlessly for Catching Fire. It's unclear how much of Haymitch's story Collins knew of when writing the trilogy, but regardless it fits well together. It made me - as well as many others - itch to read the main series again to piece everything together with fresh eyes.

The theme from the book is propaganda, and it's very clear within the first five pages of the book. The use of media and how it is used to manipulate the masses whether it be for government control or as protest. As someone who majored in politics in university, I couldn't help but apply my studies to the material. Collins clearly does her research. From a sociological standpoint that book will surely be the subject material for many uni/high school students dissertations. From a literary standpoint it's also fascinating. I know many people will pour over those pages for the never-ending references to one of the most studied poems of all time, 'The Raven' by Poe. I feel like this would be even more important in my mind if i had read A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes as I know the Covey use music to pass down tradition and it's seen as the most dangerous form of protest (in Snow's eyes, I would argue). 

Speaking of the Covey, I know everyone jokes that the people of Panem suffered because of Snow's failed not-much-of-a-situationship, but really it is absolutely fascinating how the reminder of his own obsession controls him. He is, as always, a terrible person but of a very interesting mind.

I can't imagine reading this as a standalone, but I'm curious to the effect it would have on the reader to read as that, or to read all books for the first time in chronological order. That would change the experience of the whole storyline because, again, dramatic irony. However, I don't believe they would find it as heart wrenching as those of us who read them in the order of publication. I wonder this book would just seem more pretentious that way, considering the times we are in as of Sunrise on the Reaping's release. I will also say, if you are expecting this to be YA... while it technically is YA... the first audience grew up, and Collins knows that. The book is mature in the sense that it is told by an adult to adults after several years of traumatic revolutionary events. Even though the characters in the story themselves are children, it is told exactly as it happened. When I read the word 'rape' in this book I was floored. I think it's the first time Collins explicitly said that was a torture option, even though we all knew it already, had been told of and seen the Capitol murdering and bio-engineering people and animals alike... to hear that explicitly said was indicative that Collins, while still mindful of the age group she primarily writes for, is done coddling us readers. That to me, was her own poster. (IYKYK.)

All in all, if anyone liked reading the main trilogy even a little, this book is HIGHLY recommended. And I feel that now I will have to read Snow's prequel, to further see how his psyche breaks everything down. Because if there's one thing Hunger Games fans know about Suzanne Collins works, is that the private thoughts of the characters are what make the book that much more rich, and the films simply cannot capture that. 

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dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I think ballad of songbirds and snakes might still be my favourite in the series but barely. This one still has me sobbing at the end 

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dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

It was beautifully written and I loved the ties to the original books and it's characters, it was certainly much more brutal to read and I found myself crying with the characters.

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