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Book Review: Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games #0.5)

Rating: 4.5 stars

When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight… and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

In comparison to when I read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I enjoyed reading Sunrise on the Reaping significantly more. I feel like I enjoyed this book more for many reasons, one of which is that I enjoyed reading about these Games from Haymitch’s perspective. As Katniss Everdeen’s mentor, I always wondered how he came to be the man introduced in the trilogy, and this book didn’t disappoint in sharing his story.

Even though I knew the fate of the others who participated in the Games he was in, I still found myself rooting for those he worked closely with while in the Arena. And even though I find these Games barbaric and wish they didn’t exist in this world, I continue to find how their setup by the Gamekeepers fascinating to learn more about. I especially found the Arena Haymitch found himself in to be an extremely interesting one, with how things you would normally rely on for food and drink being the things not safe to consume. The mutts that the Gamekeepers created were also interesting because some of them were animals that wouldn’t normally be threatening to people, and how they were used to target certain Tributes in the Games.

I also enjoyed the connection this book makes to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes regarding the girl Haymitch falls in love with. She’s very similar to the girl that Snow falls in love with, so seeing that connection here, even though that book isn’t my favorite book in this series, was interesting.     

If there’s anything with Sunrise on the Reaping I didn’t particularly enjoy, it would be the appearances of characters from The Hunger Games trilogy and Haymitch’s actions during the Games. I felt that there were too many characters from the original trilogy in this book, and it didn’t make sense to me for them all to be present. A couple of them I understood making an appearance here, such as the characters that are from the Capitol, but finding a way to tie everyone else into Haymitch’s story didn’t make sense to me. I also wasn’t a fan of a majority of Haymitch’s choices during his Games because I feel like they didn’t make sense for his character. Yes, he does have moments of rebellion before the Games happen. However, a lot of them are due to the situation he finds himself in and due to his dislike of the Capitol. So, Haymitch doing what he does in the Games didn’t make sense to me regarding his character, as it felt more like something the girl he loves would do than him.

As a whole, though, I enjoyed reading Sunrise on the Reaping. I enjoyed getting to read Haymitch’s story and being able to see how he became the man you come to know in The Hunger Games trilogy. Recommend reading this one if you enjoyed Haymitch’s character in the trilogy and want to learn how he won the Games the year he was in them.               

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Book Review: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games #0)

Rating: 3 stars

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined — every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute… and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

To be honest, I haven’t really read too many villain stories in my life. Not because I’ve never been interested in how villains from stories I like became who they are, just haven’t really read any. So with this book, I wasn’t sure what to expect when reading it. As someone who enjoyed reading this series, I didn’t really have too many expectations with this one because I knew the world Katniss and Snow are a part of isn’t a good one. And I knew the problems with the world of Panem started way before Snow was President.

What I found to be enjoyable about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the Hunger Games that Snow participated in as a mentor and the tribute from District 12 he was paired with Lucy Gray. I thought it was interesting to see how things were in the Capitol during Snow’s youth. I also enjoyed seeing how the Hunger Games were in the beginning verses whenever the trilogy following Katniss started. From the Gamemakers still trying to figure out the Games and how to make them more interesting to students in the Capitol being paired with tributes with an incentive if the tribute they were paired with were to win the Games. I also enjoyed in the beginning seeing the relationship between Snow and Lucy Gray as Snow did what he could to help her survive in the Hunger Games. I enjoyed seeing their dynamic because it was something I wasn’t expecting when reading this book. Lucy Gray just wasn’t the type of girl I was expecting Snow to be interested in so it was interesting to see how their relationship played out.

I felt like as a whole, the first half of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was enjoyable and hard for me to put down as I wanted to find out what would happen next. There was just the right amount of story and getting insight into what was going on in Snow’s world for me to feel like I had a good idea of where the story was heading. I also felt like I was getting a good idea of how Snow became the villain we’ve come to know through some of the choices he made in ensuring Lucy’s victory. The best example that comes to mind for me involves Lucy’s handkerchief as it was a very cunning way to make sure she didn’t get hurt by the snakes during the Games. I also felt like as a reader his thoughts when it came to his peers also helped too because he was already in the mindset of getting ahead of his peers and saying certain things in order to get a specific response from those he was talking to. I basically felt like in the beginning of this book, as a reader I could already see how he became who I came to know from the trilogy.

As The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes continued after the Games were over though, I felt my interest in what was going on slowly waning. I feel like in a lot of ways it was because what happened after the Games just wasn’t all that interesting to me. Yes, the way things went caught me off guard originally and I was interested to see how things were going for Snow in his life as a Peacekeeper. But I felt like after a certain point of that story, I was just interested in seeing his life leading up to the events in the trilogy instead of getting his story after his stunt as a mentor in the Games. His life as a Peacekeeper was just really dull and I felt like it did nothing for his story other than confirm further how much he cares about the Capitol over anyone and anything. This is demonstrated through the way his relationships with Sejanus Plinth and Lucy Gray end.

As a whole, I found the way Snow’s character develops in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes interesting since you can slowly see how he becomes the villain he’s known to be in the trilogy. However, I found his villain story extremely dull once the tenth Hunger Games are over and he’s working as a Peacekeeper in District 12, which made it extremely hard for me to continue reading his story to see what happened next. So while I enjoyed reading this book, there were some elements to it that made it hard for me to enjoy it fully as a villain origin story. I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if once the Games were over, the story focused on his life closer to when the events in the trilogy took place over his life as a Peacekeeper once the Games he participated in as a mentor were over.    

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Book Review: The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)

Rating: 4 stars

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.

Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones.

When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her—East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents.

When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.

Really enjoyed The Darkest Minds for several reasons. It was a story that caught my attention from beginning to end. I don’t know if it’s because the plot paralleled what’s been going on in the world lately or because of how dark/dystopian the story could get. The world Ruby lives in isn’t a pleasant one, full of the government trying to keep children with unique powers locked away in camps after surviving when kids their own age died of a disease that was killing children in America.

I couldn’t put this book down but tried my best to read at a slower pace so I could absorb what I was getting into. Watching Ruby’s character develop throughout the story was captivating and loved seeing her abilities and how they impacted her life. I also loved the rest of the kids she ran into when she escaped from her camp and how they were able to help her learn to trust others and be allowed to form friendships.

What I also loved about this book was how dark it could get at times. Ruby’s powers are unique because there are few children in her world that have them. When she and her fellow travelers make it to East River, she meets their leader who’s one of the few people whose classified as an Orange like her. However, he isn’t all who he’s cracked up to be, making this story more intriguing as I read on. Because while he helped her with gaining control of her abilities, he also took advantage of her, which made me dislike him more as the story continued.  

I also felt immense empathy for these kids in The Darkest Minds because I couldn’t imagine what they were going through just because they had powers. Especially when some of the kids own parents turned them into the government because of their abilities. While the powers these kids have at times sounded cool, that they sometimes couldn’t control them made me understand why Ruby felt the way she did about her abilities.  

Despite how much I enjoyed reading this book, there are some things I also didn’t enjoy too.  My biggest criticism of this book for me is the choices Ruby sometimes makes. While I get her life is hard and that some of the decisions she made were for the best of others, she also made some tough but terrible decisions. Especially close to the end of the story when one of her friends is really hurting and she seeks help from someone she shouldn’t have. I also wasn’t too keen on what she did to Liam either because I feel like she really wasn’t helping him. Some of the choices Ruby made I wasn’t at all pleased with because they always ended up hurting others instead of helping them.

But despite those choices, I still loved Ruby’s character and enjoyed reading The Darkest Minds, the first book in a series I’m planning on continuing to read so I can see what happens next. Can’t wait to read the next book in the series, Never Fade, which I’m sure will be just as enjoyable for me as this book. Have any of you ever read a book like this one before? Leave a comment below if there are any books like this one that you’ve read that you’d highly recommend because you think I’d enjoy it just as much.      

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