Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Published: October 31, 2008
Genre: young adult
Hardcover: 374 pages
Source: personal copy


My Rating: 3.5 stars


Synopsis (from GoodReads): Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning? In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival.


My Thoughts: If you have been following my blog for awhile now, you should know that I don't do young adult. I find it to be a pretty easy read and something that just isn't relevent to me. But I got swept up in all the hype. With The Hunger Games moving coming out, I just had to see the movie, but I never see a movie without reading the book first. So, I picked up the first book in this trilogy and expected to be wowed. I wasn't wowed, but I was intrigued enough to decide that I wanted to continue reading the trilogy.


I won't discuss the plot, so if you haven't read it and want to, I won't ruin anything for you. For me, I felt like that was a good story but didn't have the pull that I was expecting from such a hyped up book. I didn't feel that pull that I did from Harry Potter, where I didn't want to put the book down or go to sleep. I felt fine closing the book and going to do things. It was interesting to read about, this fight to the death among children, and scary to think about the power that a government can exert over it's citizens. I thought that the themes carried throughout the book, those of absolute power, omnipotence, loyalty, Suzanne Collins carries the themes throughout the story. I felt like those points would make it a great book for kids to read in school (and I'm not an English teacher). The only downside of this novel for me was that it was written for young adults, so the writing felt a bit simple at times.


I am continuing with the series and hope that it gets better with each book. If you haven't read this series but have been curious about it, I would encourage you to give it a try.