Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Hello reader.  No, this book isn't something I cooked from my new rotation diet!  That would be the Rhubarb jam I made last night that seemed more like Rhubarb baby food, but not this book.  Yes, it IS part of the new content plan for the Food Fan Club. No... I don't want to change the title of my blog.  I'm still a food fan, just one in search of variety.

This is my first book review.  They will only get better from here... Enjoy!

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Addicting" is right. "Couldn't put it down" would be even more right.

I recommended Hunger Games for a book club. Now, this is a very young book club, only having read one book before The Hunger Games. The first book, The Heretic's Daughter, was intense. I thought Hunger Games would be a lighter read.

I read about three pages and suddenly found a very familiar feeling, the same one I had when I started reading Twilight. Oh, this main character is young. I wonder how much older she gets throughout the series. Oh. OH! It's a young adult book! A YA BOOK!

I have no beef with the YA books, besides the fact that they always seem to suck me in before I realize they actually are YA books, but I started to feel somewhat embarrassed by my book selection. I purposely picked something less intense than The Heretic's Daughter, but this was totally different. I didn't know if the other people would like it at all. I envisioned them slowly nudging me out of the book club, maybe skipping my turn to pick books at first and then just not returning my phone calls, all because I picked a book they didn't like. The next morning, I emailed the book club, letting them know it was in fact a YA book and that if they wanted to pick a different book, that was fine with me. I was secretly still planning to read it.

The messages I got in return really surprised me though, because one girl said, "I've started reading it and it is addicting! Fun read for the beginning of the school year when things are crazy." Another said, "Randi said it was addicting so I don't think anyone minds :) I'm going to borrow her copy when she's done to take on my trip to New Mexico next weekend and I can't wait to start it!"

With my book club's go ahead, I sat down that night to read a few more chapters before bed. And I kept reading. And kept reading. And then it was morning and I couldn't stop thinking about Katniss and Petta, about The Hunger Games. The next weekend, I zoomed through both books 2(Catching Fire) and 3 (Mocking Jay) from the series. I was addicted to the plot. I wanted to know more about the characters. I was swept away with the chain of events.

By the time the book club met, me and one other person had read all three books, two others had finished book one and two and one was starting on book three. Everyone liked it, although we all admitted it had some flaws. First, the third book seems to have a "lazy" ending. All that time spent on those two main characters and at the end, they get summed up in a few nice, neat pages. Second, there are several pieces of summary that cover moments I would like to listen in on. We all agreed that those summary moments seemed like good montage moments for a movie. And then we moved on to the potential movie and who would play what role, etc. Of course, we would all go see the movies if they ever made them.

Another thing I noticed about this book, and maybe it was because of the neatly packaged ending, I don't find myself craving these characters anymore, not like with other series books where I want to know what happens next even after I've read the last book in the series.

That said, I still read the series in a span of two days. I still stayed up all night to finish The Hunger Games. I still enjoyed reading these books and would recommend them to most people.