Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Ideal Age Range: Young Adult
Mass Market Paperback: 384 Pages
Blurb: 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 steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before- and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weight survival against humanity and life against love.
Synopsis: At the beginning of The Hunger Games we meet Katniss Everdeen, a young woman on the verge of adulthood who has been taking care of her younger sister and her mother since her father was killed in a mining explosion years before. She no longer trusts her mother’s ability to provide for the family, and therefore does so herself, by breaking the rules of the Peacekeepers and hunting beyond the fence line.
Every year she chooses to up her family’s chances of survival by putting her name more times into the Reapings in exchange for oil and food rations, but it doesn’t stop her sister Prim’s name from being called the first year she is eligible to be a contender in the Hunger Games, a televised death match for kids from 12 to 18 that serves as a reminder to those that live in the Districts that the Capitol is in charge and they don’t take kindly to rebellion of any sort. Katniss chooses to volunteer to take Prim’s place in the games though she knows it’s most likely a death sentence for her. At least her family will be safe for at least one more year, she thinks.
Surprisingly, she becomes a possible victor, rather than the victim that she was expecting, with unlikely allies and sponsors. She treads a fine line between just surviving and putting on the show the people want to see, risking life and love, not sure who to put her trust into.
My Rating:(★★★★) I didn’t pick up the book for a long time, though I have heard great things about it, and I’ll tell you why.
The Cover.
The jacket of The Hunger Games looks like a Mystery book cover, or a war book cover. Not a Dystopian Young Adult book. It didn’t appeal to me, until recently, when even my own father had read it (and it’s sequel, Catching Fire)! I also have recently finished another dystopian sci-fi that is aimed at Young Adults by Scott Westerfeld called Uglies. The seed of dystopian universes was planted by Uglies but cultivated by The Hunger Games.
I suppose I should really know better than to judge a book by it’s cover, since I had discarded the Sookie Stackhouse novels for years before the show True Blood came out and I found that I absolutely loved the books (better than the show, I might add). I had thrown out the idea of reading those books for so long before because of their somewhat cartoony covers.
I am glad I looked past the cover and read The Hunger Games because I rather enjoyed it, and honestly, blew through it in two short days. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was the fact that it is clearly a series of books, leaving the reader at the end to say, “What’s next?” It’s not the end of the story, only the beginning, and that sometimes irritates me, because I like a feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment when I get done reading a book. Not to feel like I just started something.
Quotes: "You don't have much competition anywhere."
☆«·´`·.¸★☆★¸.·´`·»☆
My Rating System:
★ = didn’t like it
★★ = it was ok
★★★ = liked it
★★★★ = really liked it
★★★★★ = it was amazing
© demureconnoisseur/ Stacy Grey
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