Review by cassroberts89 - Sunrise on the Reaping

cassroberts89 's review for:

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

2.0

dark tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I hate to say this, I really do, but this was not worth pre-ordering and staying up late to read. I don't have time for a full review, just know that Sunrise adds basically nothing to the Hunger Games world. All characters, save perhaps for Maysilee, fall terribly flat. I first noticed this when I had a hard time even picturing characters in my mind. I went back to check: Yep. Virtually no physical descriptions. At all. I also could not buy into the deep, life-long love between Haymitch and Lenore, who has the personality of a wild-at-heart cardboard box. We are given like 5 minutes with all of the people Haymitch adores before he's shipped off to the longest possible prep/training session. Geez, this was like... 2/3 of the book? Idk I'd have to check. It felt like forever. Snore. The only real purpose seemed to be to give Haymitch and his fellow district 12 tributes time to get to know each other, and to give obvious cameos time to feed him info for the attempted sabotage of the arena. Which he is randomly and suddenly completely on board with doing. For some reason, that we don't really know. Because we don't really know him. Honestly, the entire book felt like a cheap, fan-fic-y attempt to "explain" why future-Haymitch is the way he is, knows the things he knows, and does the things he does, but not in any sort of organic way. It is very much just walking back from the end result. Does that make sense?

MAJOR spoiler below:

P.S. The very end (Lenore) was so implausible that I felt absolutely nothing. Poisoned gumdrops randomly left in the middle of a meadow? That's how we're doing this, Snow?

Content Warnings