Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

A Note: I don’t usually fangirl and I don’t usually buy books the day they are released.  I did both in this time around and I’m oh, so glad.  Because I love the Hunger Games series and I want you to read it too, I want to give you this warning:  While I have tried to steer clear of any Hunger Games or Catching Fire spoilers, just the synopsis may give little bits away.  If you aren’t comfortable with that, go get Hunger Games and Catching Fire, read them and then come back! Rest assured though that there are NO Mockingjay spoilers in this post, so if you’ve read the first two, you can feel comfortable proceeding from here.

The Story: Mockingjay picks up shortly after Catching Fire ended.  Katniss is a hot mess and working on getting fixed up.  The rebellion is going strong in the Districts, but the Capitol is not messing around either.  There’s a war coming and everyone is getting ready for it.  Because of her performance in the original Hunger Games and the following year, Katniss is pretty much the face of the rebellion.  President Snow is coming down hard on her and using manipulation that will get your tear ducts working. In order to protect her friends, family, and every other rebel, Katniss has to make the decision: sit and wait for something to happen or make something happen and deal with the blows as they come.  I’ll give you one guess which one she picks.

What I Thought: Suzanne Collins can effing write.  The characters, the settings, the pacing, the plot… the whole deal…. good work, Mrs. Collins.  You’ve blown me away.

While I liked the first two books in the series, I have to admit that there were parts of Catching Fire that really fell flat for me.  Most of those parts were the parts dealing with the “politics” of rebellion and I was afraid that this book was going to be chock full of that.  In a way it was, but it was just written in a better way, I feel like.  I really latched on to what was happening and found myself totally wrapped up in the whole thing.

I think that what made this book stunning was Suzanne Collins’ willingness to take real issues, strip them down and go through them one by one.  Katniss is kind of this really flawed character and I’ve read several reviews that talk about how they wish Katniss would have done this or that or whatever.  She was seventeen years old.  Seventeen year olds are impulsive and confused and gutsy.  I thought that Katniss was absolutely the real deal.

I never thought that this series was about Gale vs. Peeta… it was more about morality and where to draw the line and how to define friendships and what to do when it seems like there’s no solution.  While the Gale/Peeta question was answered in the end, for me that wasn’t the high point.  The high point was seeing these characters that we’d followed closely and learned to love making decisions that were live and death not only for them but for the whole country.  Gut-wrenching at times, yes, but incredible.

Conclusion: Read this series.  I know it’s YA.  I don’t care how old you are, this is good stuff.