Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

83 reviews

zombiezami's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

5.0

Masterfully done

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haley_reads_books's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I really liked the first half of this book, but I felt it dragged on after the games until the last few chapters which held so many plot twists I didn’t see coming at all. I can’t wait to see how the movie turns out!!

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simone_ebony's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Collins' writing style has evolved with her audience, making this a much more mature, deeper book designed for a slightly older age group. It definitely made me angry but I devoured it in like 3 days. It was honestly just so good and so interesting, however I don't love the music/lyrics incorporation into books. Makes it feel like a 2015 Wattpad fanfiction

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lastcomment314's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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ellelockley's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Coriolanus Snow has one shot at glory as a mentor in the tenth annual Hunger Games. He plans to outcharm, outwit, outmanoeuvre his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are not in his favour when he is given the female tribute from District 12. He will do anything it takes to survive, anything. This book is a very good prequel to The Hunger Games trilogy, some of the characters were loveable and some were very hard to wrap my head around whether I liked them or not. Coriolanus and Lucy Gray were two very interesting characters, I wouldn't say loveable but I did not dislike them either. Sejanus was definitely my favourite character, he was interesting and had amazing character development. The story has very big potential and I am very excited to see it come to the big screen. The only issue I have with it, is that it took me 2 months to read because some of the writing was very slow moving but I am a person who enjoys more fast/ medium-paced books. I'd only recommend this book to avid lovers of The Hunger Games otherwise I think you may find it quite dull.

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julievandemoere's review against another edition

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adventurous tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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wilamina's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

If you're picking this book up after reading the hunger games trilogy, then honestly I'd say I not worth it. Look up the basic plot and leave it at that because this book does not live up to the emotional wonders that the hunger games have. It feels like all the colour was stripped out. The best part of all the hunger games books are the actual games right? Because they're deeply emotional and everyone is running on adrenaline and a willingness to kill. But in these hunger games, barely anything happens. It's dragged on for way too long. everytime a character dies its just bland, like it's narrated by snow watching it on tv, and it reads like watching a grainy video with no sound as a character stand another then moves on. The whole thing feels like security footage being played for half the book. Then 2 thirds kf the way in it feels like the entire plot of the book is abandoned (no spoilers just look as the section title). The only redeeming factor I'd say would be knowing a little more about what makes snow tick, and why it hates 12 so much. But like I said, just look it up, don't bother going through all 517 pages. The writing style is also very elegant, but that can't make up for bland characters and lack of a cohesive plot line. It wasn't a horrible book, and the idea to write about snow was definitely a good one, but Collins could have executed it much better.

if you ask me, I think some interesting stuff could have happened if snow had gotten stuck in the arena, there he could have maybe became part of the games, and it would definitely have amped up the plot and give the hunger games fans much more if what they loved about the series in the first place. There's a reason many people think the series went down hill after catching fire, it's that the environment the games make is so tense that it's almost impossible to write a dry plot.

So in conclusion, the ballad of songbirds and snakes was annoying average, with few redeeming factors to warrant it a slightly higher grade, but without it's association with the hunger games, it would probably never have been shelved.

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