A review by booksandbraids
Sunrise On The Reaping by Suzanne Collins

adventurous emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

Commentary:

• When you are so excited for a book that you are afraid to open it and begin so instead you just sit there holding it starring at it trying working up the courage to do it. Because you only get one shot to read it for the first time and you don’t want to accidentally do it wrong….
• Page 8: CONNECTIONS! He is with Burdock Evergreen. Who has a bow in the woods. I assume this is Katniss’ dad. 
• Burdock’s cousin is Lenore Dove… Haymitch’s girlfriend. Lenore is a Covey. So that means for sure that Katniss is somehow related to Snow’s girl
• Page 28: I don’t like how he was chosen as the replacement. His name should have been drawn. 
• Page 35: “The moment our hearts shattered? It belongs to us.”
• Page 55: “on their thirteenth birthday, he gave them pure gold pins that had belonged to his mother. They’d been fashioned by Tam Amber over thirty years ago. I never saw them, but Merrilee’s features a hummingbird and Maysilee’s a mockingjay.”
• Page 73: why did it take me this long to remember that Haymitch called Katniss sweetheart. And his relationship with Luella is obviously supposed to explain why. Idk if I like it. 
• Page 88: it’s hard to imagine Wiress as a youthful teenager who won the games. I don’t know why. It’s easy to imagine Haymitch, but with Wiress it seems wrong. 
• Page 89: MAGGGGSSSSS!!!
• Agh now I once again want a book for EVERY game. 
• Page 107: Oh Beetee… your child… I know Katniss mentioned that the children of victors have been picked before. But this is so sad. Ambert is so cute and energetic. My first thought finding out he was Beetee’s son was “this can’t end well for him”. But obviously it can’t. Haymitch wins. There can only be one. 😭😭😭
• “A mentor assigned to coach his own child to his death in the Fiftieth Hunger Games”
• Page 172: EFFIE!!!!!!
• Page 194: Haymitch and Lenore talking about how they will be together even when he is a ghost 😭
• Page 232: The is the thing about fanfiction written to replicate a real book in the series while waiting for it to come out (or in this case, written because we thought this book would never come), it’s sort of an awful feeling when you start to think that the fanfiction version was maybe better than “the truth”. I read The End of the World by FernWithy before this book was ever announced and I was so obsessed. I loved everything that was done. Now reading “the truth” I keep finding myself questioning whether I like what’s happening. I never had that with FernWithy. 
• Page 252: holy shit that was a vicious way to kill Ampert
• The End….
• While I found myself questioning a lot of it while I was reading it, I think it is because I was so in love with the fanfiction version I read first. I had an even stronger reaction to breaking dawn- I hated it. Soooo much. This one I don’t hate. I just didn’t like it as much as the other version I read. But now that I’ve gotten to the end… I think I liked it. I really want to read it again already. I think next time I will listen to it. 
• That ending with the fire had me sobbing. And by the epilogue I was hysterical. Like full on wailing. When he talks about seeing Katniss- the daughter of his friend- when she was a young girl…. And how she reminded him of Louella… I’m glad I finished this before leaving on a business trip because my sobbing would have for sure been audible through hotel walls. 
• I feel like we need more now. Finnick’s game in particular. But really all of them. I saw someone say that Songbirds and Snakes was sort of like the prequel to The Hunger Games. Sunrise is sort of like the prequel to Catching Fire. And Finnick’s book would serve as the prequel to Mockingjay. That sort of makes sense. Regardless, I feel like Finnick’s story would be good to highlight the post-game abuse he endured. It would also show how additional victors are recruited and incorporated into the cause.