Catching Fire (Hunger Games Trilogy, Book 2) by Suzanne Collins
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Catching Fire (Hunger Games Trilogy, Book 2)

by

Suzanne Collins

(Author)

4.7

-

72,002 ratings


The second book in Suzanne Collins's phenomenal and worldwide bestselling Hunger Games trilogy.Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

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ISBN-10

0545586178

ISBN-13

978-0545586177

Print length

400 pages

Language

English

Publisher

Scholastic Inc.

Publication date

May 27, 2010

Dimensions

5.34 x 0.83 x 7.99 inches

Item weight

2.31 pounds



Popular Highlights in this book

  • Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.

    Highlighted by 31,495 Kindle readers

  • “I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,” Peeta replies.

    Highlighted by 17,145 Kindle readers

  • “I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever,” he says.

    Highlighted by 16,908 Kindle readers


Product details

ASIN :

B003O86FMW

File size :

5819 KB

Text-to-speech :

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Editorial Reviews

"Whereas Katniss kills with finesse, Collins writes with raw power."-- Time magazine"Collins has done that rare thing. She has written a sequel that improves upon the first book."-- The New York Times Book Review#1 USA Today Bestseller, #1 New York Times Bestseller, #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller, #1 Publishers Weekly BestsellerA Time Magazine Top Ten Fiction Book of 2009, A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009, A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, A Kirkus Best Book of 2009, A Booklist Editor's Choice


Sample

1

I clasp the flask between my hands even though the warmth from the tea has long since leached into the frozen air. My muscles are clenched tight against the cold. If a pack of wild dogs were to appear at this moment, the odds of scaling a tree before they attacked are not in my favor. I should get up, move around, and work the stiffness from my limbs. But instead I sit, as motionless as the rock beneath me, while the dawn begins to lighten the woods. I can’t fight the sun. I can only watch helplessly as it drags me into a day that I’ve been dreading for months.

By noon they will all be at my new house in the Victor’s Village. The reporters, the camera crews, even Effie Trinket, my old escort, will have made their way to District 12 from the Capitol. I wonder if Effie will still be wearing that silly pink wig, or if she’ll be sporting some other unnatural color especially for the Victory Tour. There will be others waiting, too. A staff to cater to my every need on the long train trip. A prep team to beautify me for public appearances. My stylist and friend, Cinna, who designed the gorgeous outfits that first made the audience take notice of me in the Hunger Games.

If it were up to me, I would try to forget the Hunger Games entirely. Never speak of them. Pretend they were nothing but a bad dream. But the Victory Tour makes that impossible. Strategically placed almost midway between the annual Games, it is the Capitol’s way of keeping the horror fresh and immediate. Not only are we in the districts forced to remember the iron grip of the Capitol’s power each year, we are forced to celebrate it. And this year, I am one of the stars of the show. I will have to travel from district to district, to stand before the cheering crowds who secretly loathe me, to look down into the faces of the families whose children I have killed. . . .

The sun persists in rising, so I make myself stand. All my joints complain and my left leg has been asleep for so long that it takes several minutes of pacing to bring the feeling back into it. I’ve been in the woods three hours, but as I’ve made no real attempt at hunting, I have nothing to show for it. It doesn’t matter for my mother and little sister, Prim, anymore. They can afford to buy butcher meat in town, although none of us likes it any better than fresh game. But my best friend, Gale Hawthorne, and his family will be depending on today’s haul and I can’t let them down. I start the hour-and-a-half trek it will take to cover our snare line. Back when we were in school, we had time in the afternoons to check the line and hunt and gather and still get back to trade in town. But now that Gale has gone to work in the coal mines — and I have nothing to do all day — I’ve taken over the job.

By this time Gale will have clocked in at the mines, taken the stomach-churning elevator ride into the depths of the earth, and be pounding away at a coal seam. I know what it’s like down there. Every year in school, as part of our training, my class had to tour the mines. When I was little, it was just unpleasant. The claustrophobic tunnels, foul air, suffocating darkness on all sides. But after my father and several other miners were killed in an explosion, I could barely force myself onto the elevator. The annual trip became an enormous source of anxiety. Twice I made myself so sick in anticipation of it that my mother kept me home because she thought I had contracted the flu.

I think of Gale, who is only really alive in the woods, with its fresh air and sunlight and clean, flowing water. I don’t know how he stands it. Well . . . yes, I do. He stands it because it’s the way to feed his mother and two younger brothers and sister. And here I am with buckets of money, far more than enough to feed both our families now, and he won’t take a single coin. It’s even hard for him to let me bring in meat, although he’d surely have kept my mother and Prim supplied if I’d been killed in the Games. I tell him he’s doing me a favor, that it drives me nuts to sit around all day. Even so, I never drop off the game while he’s at home. Which is easy since he works twelve hours a day.

The only time I really get to see Gale now is on Sundays, when we meet up in the woods to hunt together. It’s still the best day of the week, but it’s not like it used to be before, when we could tell each other anything. The Games have spoiled even that. I keep hoping that as time passes we’ll regain the ease between us, but part of me knows it’s futile. There’s no going back.

I get a good haul from the traps — eight rabbits, two squirrels, and a beaver that swam into a wire contraption Gale designed himself. He’s something of a whiz with snares, rigging them to bent saplings so they pull the kill out of the reach of predators, balancing logs on delicate stick triggers, weaving inescapable baskets to capture fish. As I go along, carefully resetting each snare, I know I can never quite replicate his eye for balance, his instinct for where the prey will cross the path. It’s more than experience. It’s a natural gift. Like the way I can shoot at an animal in almost complete darkness and still take it down with one arrow.

By the time I make it back to the fence that surrounds District 12, the sun is well up. As always, I listen a moment, but there’s no telltale hum of electrical current running through the chain link. There hardly ever is, even though the thing is supposed to be charged full-time. I wriggle through the opening at the bottom of the fence and come up in the Meadow, just a stone’s throw from my home. My old home. We still get to keep it since officially it’s the designated dwelling of my mother and sister. If I should drop dead right now, they would have to return to it. But at present, they’re both happily installed in the new house in the Victor’s Village, and I’m the only one who uses the squat little place where I was raised. To me, it’s my real home.

I go there now to switch my clothes. Exchange my father’s old leather jacket for a fine wool coat that always seems too tight in the shoulders. Leave my soft, worn hunting boots for a pair of expensive machine-made shoes that my mother thinks are more appropriate for someone of my status. I’ve already stowed my bow and arrows in a hollow log in the woods. Although time is ticking away, I allow myself a few minutes to sit in the kitchen. It has an abandoned quality with no fire on the hearth, no cloth on the table. I mourn my old life here. We barely scraped by, but I knew where I fit in, I knew what my place was in the tightly interwoven fabric that was our life. I wish I could go back to it because, in retrospect, it seems so secure compared with now, when I am so rich and so famous and so hated by the authorities in the Capitol.

A wailing at the back door demands my attention. I open it to find Buttercup, Prim’s scruffy old tomcat. He dislikes the new house almost as much as I do and always leaves it when my sister’s at school. We’ve never been particularly fond of each other, but now we have this new bond. I let him in, feed him a chunk of beaver fat, and even rub him between the ears for a bit. “You’re hideous, you know that, right?” I ask him. Buttercup nudges my hand for more petting, but we have to go. “Come on, you.” I scoop him up with one hand, grab my game bag with the other, and haul them both out onto the street. The cat springs free and disappears under a bush.

The shoes pinch my toes as I crunch along the cinder street. Cutting down alleys and through backyards gets me to Gale’s house in minutes. His mother, Hazelle, sees me through the window, where she’s bent over the kitchen sink. She dries her hands on her apron and disappears to meet me at the door. I like Hazelle. Respect her. The explosion that killed my father took out her husband as well, leaving her with three boys and a baby due any day. Less than a week after she gave birth, she was out hunting the streets for work. The mines weren’t an option, what with a baby to look after, but she managed to get laundry from some of the merchants in town. At fourteen, Gale, the eldest of the kids, became the main supporter of the family. He was already signed up for tesserae, which entitled them to a meager supply of grain and oil in exchange for his entering his name extra times in the drawing to become a tribute. On top of that, even back then, he was a skilled trapper. But it wasn’t enough to keep a family of five without Hazelle working her fingers to the bone on that washboard. In winter her hands got so red and cracked, they bled at the slightest provocation. Still would if it wasn’t for a salve my mother concocted. But they are determined, Hazelle and Gale, that the other boys, twelve-year-old Rory and ten-year-old Vick, and the baby, four-year-old Posy, will never have to sign up for tesserae.

Hazelle smiles when she sees the game. She takes the beaver by the tail, feeling its weight. “He’s going to make a nice stew.” Unlike Gale, she has no problem with our hunting arrangement.

“Good pelt, too,” I answer. It’s comforting here with Hazelle. Weighing the merits of the game, just as we always have. She pours me a mug of herb tea, which I wrap my chilled fingers around gratefully. “You know, when I get back from the tour, I was thinking I might take Rory out with me sometimes. After school. Teach him to shoot.”

Hazelle nods. “That’d be good. Gale means to, but he’s only got his Sundays, and I think he likes saving those for you.”

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About the authors

Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins has had a successful and prolific career writing for children's television. She has worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows, including the Emmy-nominated hit Clarissa Explains It All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. Collins made her mark in children's literature with the New York Times bestselling five-book series for middle-grade readers The Underland Chronicles, which has received numerous accolades in both the United States and abroad. In the award-winning The Hunger Games trilogy, Collins continues to explore the effects of war and violence on those coming of age. Collins lives with her family in Connecticut.

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Reviews

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

72,002 global ratings

R. McFeeters

R. McFeeters

5

Wonderful Book - Warning Spoilers -

Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2009

Verified Purchase

This book finds Katniss almost a year later in District 12 living a considerably more comfortable life, that of a victor. Her relationships with Gale and Peeta though has not progressed at all or at least it doesn't for several chapters.

Knowing that the Hunger Games are to start up again Katniss and Peeta are thrown back into the camera's eye to both their dismay. For Katniss this is considerably hard, she knows that she will have to pretend to love Peeta where as she loves Gale -- something she still has not told Gale.

Everything is to go as planned, but when President Snow, the sick and evil leader of the Capital shows up at Katniss' door she then knows nothing is as it seems. She's correct, President Snow eludes to a uprising in the other Districts and he makes a point to blame Katniss for the rebellion. He tells her that the public believes her behavior in last years Hunger Games to be defiance for the corrupt government rather then her love for Peeta. He threatens her with her families death and Gales if she does not step it up a notch and convince the public that she is just a young naive girl in love. So when the cameras are turned on and Peeta and her are sent around to each of the districts on tour to promote the next Hunger Games her and Peeta do their best to behave like lovers. During this time her and Peeta progress their relationship behind closed doors into a good friendship.

Yet, nothing can hide the fact that there is rebellion in the air and after their appearances in the districts is seems as though her attempt to be the puppet of President Snow fails miserably. When her and Peeta return to district 12 she decides that herself and her family should make a run for it. She also knows that she can not leave behind Gale, Peeta, and Haymitch (her couch from the games).

She asked Gale if he will run away with her on one of their Sunday hunting trips, he agrees and confesses his love for her, but she can't tell him that she loves him back. She wishes she could, but wants to feel like her family is safe before she can even think about love. When she can not say "I love you," to Gale they argue and she admits to him that she knows some of the districts, namely one in particular, is rebelling against the Capital. This is all Gale needs to hear before he runs back into town ready to start his own rebellion in District 12.

By the time she gets back herself to find Peeta and discuss escape with him Gale is strung up in the town square by a new Peacekeeper (Capital law enforcer) and is being beaten for pouching . Gale is taken back to Katniss' home where her mother helps bring Gale back to life after the severe beating.

As much as she wants to run away, she now realizes she can't do it. Having Gale beaten near to death has made her realize that it is in fact Gale she loves, Gale who she wants to spend the rest of her life with. That she can't pretend to love Peeta, that she can't run from truth and waste away in a life that is not hers. She decides to stay and fight for a overthrow of the government.

Unfortunately by the time Gale is back on his feet more Peacekeepers have arrived in District 12, and the whole place starts to feel more and more like a prison camp. Then when it can't get any worse the Hunger Games are announced and President Snow informs the Districts that winners from the past Hunger Games with have to play again. Katniss and Peeta know that this is a death sentence. Again Peeta and Katniss spend a whole lot of time together and get even closer. Its this time that she struggles with the fine line between their friendship and possible love.

The rest of the book reads much like the first in this series, they are trained, paraded about, and then thrown into the playing field with 2 victors from each district. What is different is the Capital's population doesn't seem all too pleased this time around. Peeta does his best to win favor for him and Katniss from the sponsors by saying they were secretly married and that she is pregnant, but it all seems pointless. Once in the game they form a shaky alliance with a young man named Finnick who is remarkably beautiful and athletic. All comes to a head when a underground movement does take hold and all the districts revolt during the last day of the Games.

In the end Katniss and Finnick are the only ones to escape to safety when the revolution happens. Peeta who is still alive is captured by President Snow and his whereabouts are unknown at the end of the book. The book is set up for the 3rd and leaves you hanging, just like the first did.

Couldn't put it down; read it in two days. Action packed and a tear jerker. The only problem I have with it is the same problem from the first book. Katniss spends a huge amount of time with Peeta and very little with Gale. Her and Peeta kiss and cuddle through out the book and she seems to waver a lot in her feelings for Peeta, does she in fact love him -- you are left to wonder. The few times Gale is in the book its short and usually through memories. So again her love for Gale is lost on me because Peeta's character is so well developed. Not to mention he is just so selfless and kind. How could you not love him. Although, I think we will see a lot more of Gale in the next book just because the writer seems to set it up that way.

Can't wait for the 3rd installment!

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2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Amazon Customer

5

Love It

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2024

Verified Purchase

This book is filled with dramatic endings for chapters (something I love) and an especially dramatic one for the end of the book. A very engaging, plot twisting sequel to the book "The Hunger Games", In which we learn more about the hunger games and the unfair Council than you could ever imagine. I can't finish this review because I MUST buy the next book now!

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Bridget I. Proulx

Bridget I. Proulx

5

Good book

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2024

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This is an awesome sequel to the first book. It looks very nice and has a great story. This book also arrived the next day after we ordered it. I recommend this seller if your looking for a the second book.

Derek B.

Derek B.

5

An improvement in every aspect!

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2015

Verified Purchase

All too often, I find that sequels just don't provide a worthy follow up to the original or that sometimes the original story is just so incomplete that I hardly have any desire to move forward for fear of never receiving a satisfying conclusion. For this reason, I often stay away from sequels and even series in general, at least in terms of books. I think this is part of the reason it took me so long to pick up Suzanne Collins' CATCHING FIRE (The Hunger Games Book 2) despite having read the original and seen both of the respective movies a long while ago. The CATCHING FIRE movie adaptation was one of the few movie sequels that I ever thought to be drastically better than the previous film in every way possible. That's not to say that it made me like the first any less, just that I felt it had improved in all aspects. And so I went into this book with timid excitement, hoping I would feel the same way.

The book version of this story impressed me exactly as I hoped it would. It is an improvement on Collin's already fantastic narrative that feels fresh and more mature while also allowing readers to spend more time with her fantastic characters, world, and story.

CHARACTERS Katniss and Peeta are back for another adventure. They've done the impossible together and now they have returned home, but things will never be the same. They are locked into a false romance where Peeta now realizes that his affections towards Katniss are only reciprocated when the pair are in front of a camera. He is made to feel even more alone than he did at the start of the games while Katniss deals with her own set of issues. Gale is now referred to as her cousin despite that being far from the truth. On one hand, this makes it easier for Katniss to be seen with him, but it also means they will never be together since it is ultimately her destiny to marry Peeta, whether her feelings for him are true or not. She and Gale come to the realization that there is something between them and Katniss realizes that Gale is another boy in her life that she has been hurting.

Then there's the fractured relationship between the Capitol and the Districts which she is also forced to acknowledge when President snow appears in her home and threatens her loved ones if she doesn't play along with what he wants. Despite her surviving the Hunger Games tournament, the "games" aren't really over at all. She's still fighting for her and Peeta's lives, but now she has the lives of her mother, Prim, Gale, Gale's family, Haymich, and probably Peeta's family to worry about. She may also very well be fighting for the lives of every District in Panem. President Snow's role is quite big here which is a nice change of pace since he remained largely unseen in the first book. Then there's Plutarch Heavensbee, the new head gamemaker who is a bit more removed, but what parts he is in are quite good. Katniss also meets up with a variety of previous victors like the flamboyantly handsome Finnick, the aggressive Joanna, the clever Beetee, and deranged Wirress. Those who have already seen the movie know what circumstances Katniss meets these other victors under, but I won't spoil that part of the story since it is far more of a surprise in the book. The only other thing that can really be said is that each of these new faces is a wonderful addition to the cast and that they all have a lot to add to the story as a whole.

WORLD/SETTING The world that Katniss returns to is not the same one that she left. She's a victor now which means she gets a fancy new home in a special section of District 12 and she must be part of the victory tour where the victor of the games visits each district and honors the fallen tributes before attending a lavish dinner party. It also means she will have to become a mentor to the future tributes of District 12. At least those are all of the things that would happen to a typical victor.

This year is different, this year there are two victors because of Katniss's defiance to the Capitol. Her refusal to play by their rules means that she has Peeta to go through all of this with, but it has also sets into motion events beyond what she would ever be able to predict. Uprisings have sprung up in several districts in the spirit of following Katniss's example. District 12 sees a stronger security presence which imposes brutal restrictions upon the citizen's way of life. Nothing Katniss does seems to be right and nothing she says can quell the anger that builds up against the Capitol. She finds herself in an impossible situation where the world of the games and the real world are now largely one in the same. Katniss never escaped the arena, only set it loose upon the world and now she is the symbol of a rebellion that threatens to bring end to Panem.

Although everything is different now, this book brings readers to a variety of places within Panem and introduces us to locations that were previously only mentioned. Collins paints each with simple, yet vibrant descriptions which will probably make you both happy and remorseful that they are on the brink of destruction. The destitution of 12 no longer seems as bad when other districts are portrayed as mammoth prisons where inmates are born into servitude of an unforgiving Capitol.

PLOT/TONE The overall content and tone of this narrative is a few shades darker than the previous installment which probably says a lot considering the first one explored a gladiatorial tournament in which children fought to the death. Minor details aside, things are a lot more serious now since the stakes are so much higher. Before, readers worried about the lives of twenty four young tributes, but now they are presented with an entire world whose continued existence seems highly in question. Katniss, our once empowered heroine somehow seems so small now that the conflict involves forces far beyond her control. To be fair, they are beyond anyone's control, but Katniss finds herself especially vulnerable since she is the catalyst for all the terrifying changes going on around her.

Katniss also can't just fake it till she makes it anymore. Peeta and her have to face the consequences of their lovers routine in the arena and try to come to an understanding, if not a salvaged friendship. Gale's involvement adds further complication for Katniss's already overwhelmed set of teenage emotions. All the other characters are also a bit worse off this time around which adds an additional layer of edginess to it all. Some characters are more in the dark than others about the events happening around them which leads readers into an ever-spinning web of secrets, lies, and manipulation. Even having already seen the film, I felt delightfully in suspense the entire way through this book, partially in thanks to being able to experience the events through Katniss's point of view which offers a fresh take on things. Again, there are a number of really wonderful surprises in store and if you haven't already seen this movie, then I won't spoil them for you here. If you're already familiar with this story, then I can promise that this ride won't be any less enjoyable a second time around.

As a kind of aside to all this, it is worth noting that this book felt far less like a true YA novel than the first one did. There is significantly more nudity, stronger language and sexual references, and the depictions of violence are far more graphic this time around. Even the overall language and writing style that Collins employs feels quite a bit more grown up than her last book. Not that this series has ever really been known as kid-friendly, but parents might want to know that this one definitely pushes the limits of what can/should go into a YA novel.

CONCLUSION I really do think this is a series that no reader should pass up on. If the first book didn't quite sell you, then I'd strongly urge you give this one a shot. If you loved the first, then it really only gets better here and I can honestly say that I am extremely excited to dive into the third and final book of this trilogy, though I may try and savor it a bit more whereas I kind of tore through CATCHING FIRE as though there was no tomorrow.

The plot is more serious, the writing style and content are more adult, the new characters are a win all around, and this is just a book that I will probably love forever.

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14 people found this helpful

the penguin

the penguin

4

Embers aren't the only things that catch fire

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2013

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Suzanne Collins has done it again; after writing her smash-hit novel The Hunger Games, she's released the second book of the trilogy, Catching Fire. Hundreds of thousands of Hunger Games enthusiasts have rushed to the second book after finishing the first, in hopes for more of the life of Katniss Everdeen. After the intensity and enthrall the Hunger Games held, I didn't think the second book would impress me nearly as much as the first. After reading it, I felt that I was right; the second book was wonderful, but it seemed tremendously more slow paced, less intense, and I found myself simply rushing through some parts that seemed lacking. Overall, a good read, but don't expect the same kind of intensity as The Hunger Games. After surviving the Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta return to District 12 in a blaze of glory, being the first District 12 victors in years. Katniss finds Peeta avoiding her after revealing that she was simply pretending to love him, and Gale seems to be holding her at a distance as well. She doesn't have much time to worry about this though, because she and Peeta have to work together again on the Victory Tour, and pretend they're star-crossed lovers as they visit each of the 12 Districts to convince everyone that they weren't trying to undermine the Capitol, especially President Snow. But things take a horrible turn as the 75th Hunger Games arrive, and with them the Quarter Quell, which will turn the lives of Katniss and Peeta upside down. At the same time, tiny sparks of an uprising are beginning to catch, and even though Katniss unintentionally helped create them, she doesn't truly know if she should try to stop them. Katniss has to figure out how to outwit the Capitol yet again in a game of life and death, but this time, if she makes so much as one mistake, everyone she loves could be hurt. When I was reading Catching Fire, I was reminded of The Giver. Both novels take place in a futuristic society that it extremely different from society today. Both novels are also under the rule of an extremely strict government that is trying to deprive its people of something (In Catching Fire, there's no freedom, in The Giver, no one really has any of their own emotions). The Games aspect of the book reminded me strongly of a manga, Mirai Nikki (which means Future Diary), in which 12 people are competing against each other to become God. They all have to try to kill off other diary owners and stay alive, and the last person left alive becomes God. Slightly similar to how 12 Districts are fighting against each other, and the last person alive gets a great deal of glory and riches to live off of, is it not? The reason that I didn't find Catching Fire nearly as good as The Hunger Games was because of the difference in the pacing of both books. In The Hunger Games, everything seems so much more fast-paced, and the novel progressed with a sort of momentum, similar to that of a train. Overall, everything seemed more detailed and more exciting. However, when it comes to Catching Fire, the metaphorical train seems to slam into a wall. During about the first half of the book, everything that happened seemed to lack extensive detail and to me just seemed incredibly boring. When Suzanne Collins told her readers about Katniss reuniting with Gale for the first time since the Games, I was expecting a much more detailed scene than "...my mother said "Your cousins can hardly wait to see you!" Then I turned and saw Gale and Hazelle and all the kids waiting for me, so what could I do but go along?" Collins could have definitely made that more descriptive and more than two sentences long. Up until about the Quarter Quell, I found myself reading simply to get through the book, and I kept thinking to myself, "When is something exciting going to happen?" I just felt that too few events in the novel were given the attention and detail they deserved, and were written off to be more minor things. Catching Fire also seemed to be lacking in detail on the characters. It didn't seem like any new information about the main characters was revealed, and some important characters seemed to be missing from a great deal of the story. Many new characters were introduced because of the Games aspect of this novel, but it didn't seem like many of them were heavily detailed, aside from appearance. For example, when Collins describes Katniss' first meeting with Finnick, she describes his appearance to be "Tall, athletic, with golden skin and bronze-colored hair and those incredible eyes." She also brings up how he won the games, and that he was loved by many girls in the Capitol, but to me it doesn't feel like she's trying to show the readers his depth as a person. If a reader were to read on into Mockingjay, the third book of The Hunger Games trilogy, they would find that there's much more to Finnick than his appearance and the fact that girls adore him. All the details about a character don't need to be presented immediately or directly, but it seems a bit much to stretch the description of a character and their personality into a whole other book. In some instances, it's easy to say who should or shouldn't read a book, based on things like genre, content, theme, etc. However, that's not so with any of the books in The Hunger Games trilogy. Due to the fact that the books are more or less based off of an annual event in which 24 children attempt to kill each other, I would say any of the books in the trilogy should only be read by people age 11 and up. However, that's about as specific as you can get when recommending or advising against reading this novel, or any in the trilogy. The trilogy is seemingly filled with role reversals and contradictions of what most people consider normal. The narrator of the novels is a girl, but the way she thinks and acts is much more masculine than feminine. Stylists and fashion appear often, yet so do weapons. Katniss is female, yet loves to hunt and trap, while Peeta is male, and has a passion for baking. You can't truly say a certain type of person should read the books, because they're so diverse and multifaceted. When it comes down to the wire, this book is not the best in the world. However, it's far from the worst in the world. Parts of it seemed immensely dull, completely lacking, and just boring. Yet at the same time, there were parts of the novel that were just as gripping, intense, and wonderful as I found myself hoping for. When it comes to trilogies, the first novel is always when readers are introduced to a whole new world of possibilities, and the last is when many readers wish wistfully for more after reading an epic finale. The middle novel is neither the end nor the beginning, simply the time between. Authors can try to write the middle novel so it turns out to be as fantastic as the beginning and the end, or they can choose not to put in as much effort and turn out something less than satisfactory. While Collins didn't write the novel in a way that exceeded expectations (Or mine, at least), she did manage to create a lovely piece of literature that held some of the same exceptional qualities as the first novel of the trilogy. Suzanne Collins, I applaud you on your work in this second novel, and hope that the rest of your ever-faithful supporters will, too.

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