WeHa Book Club

*Spoiler-Free Review*

First completed series of the year and boy was it a whopper. I know most of you are familiar with The Hunger Games trilogy and I’d bet a lot of you have at least seen the movies if not read all the books, but this was my first time.

I need to avoid spoilers here, because I’m living proof that not everyone knows this story. So I will spend this review talking about the series, as a whole, in very general terms.

Let’s just start by saying that Mockingjay was a very satisfying conclusion to the series. If you enjoyed the first couple books, I feel confident in saying that you’ll be happy with the conclusion of the story.

What is effectively a very simple writing style, as it’s intended for young adult audiences, makes for a very easy and fast read, but I don’t want that to take away from the larger themes at play here. The Hunger Games tackles some pretty heavy subject matter of oppressive government corruption and the dystopian not-so-distant future that we seem to be flying towards these days.

(I hope that’s not too political because that is not the intent of this website, but I think pretty much everyone can agree that things aren’t going so well these days.)

As far as a rating goes, I tend to look at a series in comparison to itself. And for context, I gave the first book 4 stars and the second book 4.5 stars. I enjoyed the first book and thought it was a great read, particularly for younger audiences. But the way Collins expanded the scope of the second book beyond that of the first was the most impressive part of the series for me.

So, my overall review for the series is this: Solid start, really great sequel, and satisfying conclusion. As a little bonus review, I enjoyed the first two movies, as well. I’m yet to read the two part Mockingjay movie, but I already picked the blu-rays up from the library so that’s next.

So far, I’ve found the movies to be faithful adaptations of the books, ? at the very least, and at times even better than the books. I know you’re not supposed to say that as a big book guy, but I call it like I see it.

I need to take a little break from Panem for a while, but I will be back for the prequels before the year’s out. If you’re someone who missed when these books were huge and have written them off as “kid stuff” since then, I would encourage you to pick them up. If you’ve already read The Hunger Games series, then you already know how good these are. I’m glad I can finally count myself among the latter group.

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“Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins