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

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

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emotional sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Loved this so much I want more books about the hunger games the only thing was I wished the writing was filled with more emotion instead of just stating things that were hapening

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adventurous dark emotional sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Was hoping for more, honestly; I love the themes of the story (the power of propaganda and planting seeds for a change you may never see) but was hoping for a different structure. Songbirds and Snakes surprised me by having the games completed early on, but they take up most of the novel here. It’s fine but at this point I think Suzanne Collins should start a new series or write some standalones.

Will I be seated for the film adaptation??? Yes!

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adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring 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: Yes

Great fan service that doesn’t force its way into the existing world. Works as a standalone story, an intro to the franchise, or a supplement to what you’ve already read.

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

Suzanne Collins is great. I really enjoyed this retelling of Haymitch’s Hunger Games. I really enjoyed the elements that were tied in from A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and the original The Hunger Games trilogy. 
Katniss being the daughter of Haymitch’s old best friend was really special. 
Haymitch’s games were brutal. He experienced so much loss. The theme of implied submission and his fight against that, the consequences of losing everyone he loved, and then giving up was really compelling. His friendship with Ampert, BeeTee’s son from district 3, and the climax of that friendship, where Haymitch was unable to stop Ampert from being completely devoured by carnivorous squirrels was horrifying. 
Mags and Wiress being his mentors was bittersweet, especially given the way they were clearly broken by the Capitol in response to the role they played in undermining the games.

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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: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I loved Sunrise on the Reaping. It’s a phenomenal prequel into Haymitch’s story that does a really good job discussing authoritarianism, trauma, grief and addiction and the intersections of these. Highly recommend if you’re in the mood for a narrative, quick read and don’t mind an incredibly sad, but poetic ending.

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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 funny 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: Yes

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