Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Mockingjay

In my rereading of THG trilogy, I considered leaving this one out. It truly is four hundred and fifty odd pages of bleakness. Of a seventeen year old being puppeteered for a war effort, whilst struggling alone with the overwhelming trauma that death, loss, murder and manipulation brings. I could hardly read the last fifty pages through my tears.

Katniss’ predicament makes sense of course, and the conversation Collins presents about war and enemies and victors I agree with, but it needs saying that this conclusion of the trilogy has such a bleak and dark plot that I am left feeling empty.

Despite the love I have for this series, I forgot and am disappointed in how shoehorned in the love triangle conflict is. In a series about a child living in famine, thrust into murder for sport - twice, who becomes unwittingly thrown about as a pawn for the rebel cause surrounded by adults who are largely unfussed by her unaddressed trauma, and then is off to battle in the war herself in a series of mishaps- Of course! We must remember this protagonist is a girl, so we must save room for the only two male friends in her life to compete as love interests. It is a sad feature in most YA novels with a female protagonist.

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arlorees's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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valereads's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The final book in The Hunger Games trilogy. This book was definitely better that Catching Fire and an acceptable end to the series if not a perfect one.

I'm afraid to say that, like Catching Fire, this book had major pacing issues. Like Catching Fire this book had a slow first third which thankfully felt less tedious than the one in Catching Fire. The middle third was honestly forgettable. The rest of the pacing felt messy. There were chapters and chapters where nothing seemed to happen followed by a few chapters where everything moved so fast it was difficult to process everything. I felt like this weakened the impact of some of the more violent parts of the book, especially as we weren't given the opportunity to dwell on their impact in the slow chapters.

Once again the romantic relationships were one of the weakest parts of this novel. With the twist that both options in the love interest were kind of bad in this book. Katniss has clearly developed an unhealthy co-dependency with Peeta from their shared trauma and due to the trauma of losing district 12, Gale is filled with toxic anger and hate. I wish we'd gotten more focus on the platonic relationships in this book, especially the one between Katniss and Prim. The few moments we had of them together were lovely and Katniss grieving over Prim with Buttercup genuinely made me cry. The romantic relationships didn't make me nearly so emotional.

In addition I found it hard to care about a lot of the secondary characters introduced in this book let alone remember their names. They were underdeveloped which majorly reduced the impact of their violent deaths which I especially felt when they seemed to impact Katniss a lot.

On a more positive side, I appreciate how Collins continues to explore how the trauma the main characters have suffered and how it affects their mental states. Unfortunately one place where this is not as well handled is the sexual trauma one secondary character has experienced. I thought the way the discussions of his trauma and experiences of sexual assault and trafficking were poorly done and would probably be triggering for most survivors, this is exacerbated by the character in questions violent death later in the book.

Overall I'm not sure how I feel about this book. It definitely isn't as good as the first book but I do not regret reading. I'm glad I can now say I have finally finished reading this trilogy. (And, no, I will not be reading A Ballad of Song Birds and Snakes.)

Content Warnings: addiction (alcohol and drug addiction), body horror, child death, confinement, drug abuse, drug use, gore, grief, gun violence, medical content, panic attacks, police brutality, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, violence, animal death, excrement, references to genocide, medical content, mental illness, references to miscarriage, sexual assault, trafficking, torture

Content Warnings

anne311's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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