Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Spotgaai

Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Spotgaai by Suzanne Collins

338 reviews

idk_indigo's review against another edition

4.5

emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Not as good as the first 2, but I thought this book was beautifully written. The hopeful ending sticks with you, a blessing after the horrors you hear happened during the war. An exploration of trauma, how it sticks with you, & how you can (& will) heal from it. A good example that healing comes from helping, not from hurting, & that it is okay to be angry & it is okay to want revenge, but ultimately, these things will fade. Human nature is to love, & that comes in many different forms.

Content Warnings

danajoy's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

anne311's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense slow-paced

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

lucymeg's review against another edition

5.0

emotional sad fast-paced

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Beautiful conclusion to a gripping series.

Content Warnings

erynlasbelin's review against another edition

4.75

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Current review, written in July of 2025:

This concludes my reread of the original books after reading Ballad and Sunrise earlier this year.

This is a devastating book. It's amazing in retrospect that we were reading this as kids - it just genuinely did not land the same way back then, at least not for me. (As you can see from my original review below, preserved for posterity and accountability. I was big mad about this book for a very long time.)

Collins really aimed so much higher than the other dystopian YA novels of the day, and this holds up much better because of that. This isn't a "teenage girl kicks ass and runs a country" book, this is a "teenage girl is used as a disposable pawn by forces much larger than her, and she and her companions have to come to terms with the horrors of war as best as they can" book. And it's a powerful exploration of trauma, grief, propaganda, and war. The "love triangle" isn't really a love triangle at all; it's just a way of exploring two very different approaches to just war theory, and both Peeta and Gale have important roles to play. (I am still solidly "team Peeta", possibly even more so all these years later.)

I'll admit I still don't understand why Katniss voted yes. Some kind of subterfuge to maintain the President's trust? But why would that be necessary? Why risk it? It bothers me that this still niggles at me all these years later. Reading back through my other complaints from back then, though, I mostly conclude that I just wasn't quite able to *get* it yet. (Not that I would be against getting more details. If anything, Ballad and Sunrise have made me realize just how eager I am to find out what else is going on in this world, outside of Katniss's head or before her time.) But I'm still torn up over Finnick. Give that poor man (barely more than a kid himself, to my current eyes) a little more respect on his way out, will you?

Original review written in January of 2012, when I was myself 17 - I think the first actual book review I'd ever written:

I read The Hunger Games Thursday. I read Catching Fire Friday. And I read Mockingjay Saturday. It was okay. Not as good as Catching Fire, which was not as good as The Hunger Games. But seriously…what was that ending? That was the most anti-climactic thing Collins could have done.

We don’t see the Capitol actually being taken over, we just hear afterwards that, oh, yeah, by the way - the Capitol got taken over while you were asleep. I actually thought for a while that she was still in her drug-induced dreamland when this happened, because the last few chapters of the book were all shrouded by that foggy depression that robbed everything of its importance.

The actually really good plot line of Coin killing the children and blaming it on Snow felt really rushed, and like Katniss’s final action on the matter was a result of manipulation more than her actual realization of Coin’s evil - I mean, she basically just killed her for killing Prim, right? What about the many other reasons she should have had? Obviously Prim’s death was a horrible thing, but there were other, more horrible things, too, surely? The war? The needless killing she sanctioned? The continuation of the Hunger Games?

Why did Katniss just get shipped back to District 12? Can we have some reasons for that? Can she have some kind of reaction? Can she do something other than lie there catatonic while Greasy Sae cooks for her?

I was on the Peeta side of the whole Peeta vs. Gale thing (though by this point I was just really tired of hearing about it, and of her going back and forth between them, indiscriminately kissing without worrying about how this will affect them), but WHAT A HORRIBLE WAY OF RESOLVING IT. Katniss didn’t even make a choice - like every single other aspect of her life - Gale just goes to District 2 (again - details? Can you take some initiative in your writing and explain this for us?) and Peeta’s the only thing left. Their “romance” at the end was the least romantic thing they’ve had together. He’s mentally unstable, she’s horribly depressed, and they get stuck being neighbors again, so eventually end up producing offspring. Okay. How exciting. I would have liked to have seen some remnants of old, first-arena Peeta and Katniss returning. Their time in the cave. Something that makes you really want them to be together again. Which brings me to…

I get the emotional scarring - really, I do. I would be really annoyed if there were not some kind of repercussions of the trauma they’d endured. But…well, just because it’s realistic doesn’t make it interesting, does it? The biggest part of what makes a story good is a cast of strong characters who have the ability to overcome. The characters from the first two books would easily have accomplished this. But by the end Katniss had kind of just…given up on everything. Completely. While reading everything following Prim’s death, I felt kind of dizzied by the haze of depression and indifference lying over everything. I thought things were going to pick back up when she finally encountered Snow, realized Coin’s deception, and acted on it - but nope, that was immediately followed by her trying to kill herself, then yet again waking up in her room and being drugged senseless. That will only win my sympathy so many times, and by the end of Mockingjay, that storage of sympathy has long been depleted.

And the deaths - okay, yes. People have to die a lot in these books. I accepted that before I even started reading them. And with a lot of these deaths, it made sense. Rue. As sad as I was, I got it, and it was necessary. The victors in CF. The generic sets of war casualties. But the deaths of the Star Squad felt kind of…well, extremely pointless. They could have been handled better. Boggs, I got. That worked and it carried sufficient impact. It gave Katniss the ability to lead the soldiers on, to take on her own plan - though, really, I thought everyone followed her a little too willingly. The background rebels we didn’t meet until now (Jackson, Mitchell, etc.) - those deaths didn’t bother me so much because we don’t even know those characters. But Finnick? Finnick, the victor; Finnick, who had just been married after what is possibly the worst imaginable existence - and then he dies? It’s not even that he died, but more how it happened - along with a host of others so that it loses all of its meaning, only making a momentary impression on Katniss and not earning much time in the novel. That really irked me. By this point, four of my five favorite characters are dead - can you at least have the decency to devote a little more energy to his death? Because that’s just it - I cried when Rue died. I panicked when Cinna was dragged away. At least there was a moment when Katniss realized the impact of Boggs’s death. But Finnick just…dies. And the slap in the face of his kid later - UGH, it was such a Teddy Lupin moment that I wanted to scream.

And the biggest thing at all - KATNISS VOTED TO CONTINUE THE HUNGER GAMES. KATNISS, THE PERSON WHO, POSSIBLY MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE, HAD REASON TO HATE THE HUNGER GAMES AND CAUSE THEM TO STOP, VOTED TO CONTINUE THEM. And then very soon after went on a rant about how stupid humans are for allowing the Hunger Games to happen and how everyone’s better off without them. WHERE WAS THAT WHEN YOU VOTED YES? It was awful and out of character. The Katniss from the first two books - no matter how distraught she was over Prim’s death - would not have voted yes. Prim would not have died if it weren’t for the Games. None of those people would have. No amount of grief should have enabled Katniss to inflict that on others.

Obviously there is the possibility that she voted yes in order to gain Coin’s trust, and that’s why Haymitch voted with her - and that would be a really good plan (though I’m still not convinced Coin would have slaughtered her for voting no - I mean, she didn’t kill Peeta, Beetee, or Annie, which she could easily have done since none of them were particularly stable), and perhaps that’s even what is supposed to have happened, but the writing just doesn’t support it. We aren’t given any glimpse into her reason for saying yes, other than “for Prim”. This can be argued, I guess, but it felt like she hadn’t made up her mind to kill Coin until she had her bow trained on Snow and thought about what he had said about agreeing not to lie. Besides, after her vote, how could she have any way of knowing that the government wouldn’t go ahead with the council’s decision? She voted yes and then planned to die. So what, then, is stopping more Games? It worked out in the end, which probably makes my whole tirade on it a bit moot, but this is still driving me insane. If nothing else, Katniss turned down an opportunity to make her stand. She could have spoken up for what was right, but, instead, killed Coin and promptly reentered delirium while everyone else took up for her (and we didn’t get to hear a word of any of it).

The book was really alright up until the last few chapters. And this makes it seem like I dislike the series, which is not true at all - I loved the first two books. That’s why I had nothing to say about them - they were good and I was not annoyed. I just felt that this was a horribly anticlimactic and fairly disappointing ending to a series that had so much potential to be epic. Even such events that I appreciated were not written well enough. We deserved more activity, rather than watching Katniss sitting passively by while the world changed around her. And we deserved a better heroine. Katniss deserved to be a better heroine - where even did her personality go? PTSD aside, a book is no longer interesting when the protagonist becomes a hollow shell. Coming off the high intensity of the first two books, Mockingjay was a disappointment.

Content Warnings

lennie_reads's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

siobhanward's review against another edition

2.0

dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I would absolutely bump this up to a 3.5* - the two star rating is very clearly a reflection of my feelings about the ending of the series and certain events, rather than the book itself. I think there was just a lot that I missed the first time around - interesting parallels throughout, choices that Collins made, that just went over my head the first time.

I'm really looking forward to reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes now, since it seems like a lot of it will tie into this book and some of what was learned in it. Anyway, rereading this series was such a fun and enjoyable surprise. Shout out to all the Hunger Games gals who have since donated their books to thrift stores, which meant I didn't have to wait for library copies lol.

Content Warnings

ashlightgrayson's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

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