Book Review: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
★★★★★

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YOU. GUYS. I finally finished The Hunger Games, and oh my god!!! I mean, I knew I was going to love it considering how much I loved the movies, but ahhhhhh!!! So good. omg it’s so good.

I’ve mentioned this to you guys before, but I had never read the books before now (I know, I know, shame on me), and I had only just seen the movies a few weeks ago. I had heard they were good, but I was not prepared. It ended up turning into a marathon, which resulted in me staying up until like 6am cause I just had to watch them all back-to-back. I tried to put off reading the books for a bit so the story wouldn’t be as fresh in my memory and I could enjoy it more… but I just couldn’t hold out any longer. Plus, my memory is pretty terrible anyway, so I figured what the hay, let’s give the book a go. And it was amazing!

I’m sure by now most of you have either read the books or seen the movies, but still…

ALERT: SPOILERS AHEAD!

I loved Katniss’ character so much. She was strong and brave enough to find confidence in her, but she was still vulnerable enough to be believable and flawed enough to be human. Of course I loved seeing her be Ms. Badass and Captain Survival, but I also was glad to see her break down, express fear, and cry over the events that took place, because it made her seem so much more real. Same goes for her flaws. She is in no way a perfect character, which is easily seen with her impenetrable nature, her motives and constantly conflicting feelings regarding Peeta, and especially how quickly she draws her bow on Peeta when she realizes they won’t both be able to win the Games after all. I mean, damn girl! You think he’s gonna screw you over after all that?? While she’s not always admirable, she’s certainly realistic, and I loved that!

AND PEETA, THOUGH. I don’t even know what else to say except ❤️❤️❤️!

I also found myself being irritated by all the focus she puts on Gale while in the Games. Maybe it’s because I’m not a fan of love triangles. Maybe it’s because I don’t feel that it even works as a love triangle because we saw no sort of romance between Gale and Katniss before she went into the Games. Sure, he asked her to run away with him before the Reaping, but I saw no romance in that. It was right before they were going to possibly get chosen to get thrown into an arena where they’d have to kill other kids to survive. DUH, people are going to talk about running away to avoid that! Who wouldn’t? (Except those crazy Career kids. They’re a whole different breed of insanity.)

I don’t know, I just saw Gale as a friend the whole time, and I felt all the “but what would Gale think??” thoughts that Katniss kept having were just… they didn’t feel right. Especially since she kept talking about how they were just friends. Idk. All I know is I’m definitely a Katta fan all the way! Is it… is it Katta? Or Peetniss? Or… whatever their couple name is. Both of those sound awful, lol.

Aside from the Gale nonsense, I absolutely loved this book. It took me a while to get through, partially because I saw the movies so recently so I knew what was going to happen (and the movie sticks surprisingly close to the book) and partially because I just got so obsessed with blogging lately that I didn’t leave myself enough time for reading! I’m so glad I decided to finally sit down and finish this one, though. Definitely worth it!

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What are your thoughts on this series?
Did it live up to the hype?