WeHa Book Club

*Spoiler Free Review*

“May the odds be ever in your favor.”

There are plenty of iconic book series that I’ve yet to dive into, as I’d imagine is the case for most of you reading this, but The Hunger Games is one that has been very high on my list for years now. I finally tackled the Harry Potter series back in 2023-24, and I finished Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series in the second half of 2025. Now it’s time to see what all this Katniss Everdeen hype is about.

Full disclosure, I have seen the first movie before. I saw it in theaters and only the one time, so this would have been back in 2012. I had remembered the general plot, the larger details from the book’s world and a handful of the more iconic characters, like my guy Haymitch. But much of this book was new to me.

The idea of a dystopian society pitting its poorer citizens against each other in some sort of ‘fight to the death’ is not an entirely original idea. Not only did it exist in our own world via the Roman Colosseum and less-grandiose examples of hand-to-hand combat throughout history, but it’s a fairly common theme in the arts.

Take my review of The Long Walk by Stephen King, for example. Teens entering into a competition with only one winner left standing. The promise of fantastic prizes and a life of comfort and wealth for the winner while all the losers are left to suffer an early and violent death.

The central conflict has been done before, to varying levels of success. Where The Hunger Games really stands out from the crowd, however, is its scope and mythology. It’s rare to find such a fully realized world in the first few chapters of a new series. This goes double for YA books which, by the nature of its audience, tend to tell a simpler, more straight-forward narrative.

The story is told, in its entirety, through the first-person perspective of Katniss, thrusting all of us into this strange and brutal world alongside her. This differs just a little bit from the movie which shows us a handful of scenes where Katniss isn’t present. As a result, in the book, we are not privy to the conversations that two other characters have in private and that leads to a lack of scenes with the Game Master or President Snow. We only see what Katniss sees or hear what other characters tell us.

But at any rate, the first entry into the series is about as exceptional as any series starter I’ve read. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a fun introduction to the wizarding world but there is very little in the sense of action. In The Gunslinger, the first book of The Dark Tower series, there is a whole lot of plot and action but very little in the way of character development or backstory. It’s difficult when embarking on such an epic journey to nail both from the start. The Hunger Games did just that.

Even if you’ve seen the movie, I would highly recommend picking up the book. It’s not quite the gap in quality that some other book-to-movie transitions are, as I personally find the movie to be very good – Jennifer Lawrence is perfectly cast in my opinion – but it’s still a very enjoyable read on it’s own. I’m excited to finish out the trilogy and dive into the more recent releases.

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins