Brittany Geragotelis

photo credit: Scholastic

I received my copy of Mockingjay in the mail the day after it came out in bookstores, via my contact at Scholastic. My relationship with The Hunger Games trilogy has been a love/hate one. When I first started reading the first book in the series (The Hunger Games), I was both equally appalled at the amount of violence that was so casually cast around its pages and ridiculously intrigued by the complex world that these characters lived in (or rather, survived through). In the end, the wonderfully messed up world of Panem won me over and I quickly plowed through Suzanne Collins' second book, Catching Fire.

Now, I didn't like Catching Fire quite as much as The Hunger Games; only about half the book actually followed Katniss and Peeta through the hunger games, which was really what made me love the first book. But even still, the exciting second half made up for the boring first half and left me wanting to know what was going to happen to Katniss in the end.

Even as a book reviewer, I wasn't allowed to see Mockingjay before its release date. No one was. And when the book finally did find its way onto my desk, I was in the middle of reading another book and had another one I had to read for work right after that. So, it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I was actually able to pick up the final book in the series. And on my way back from Disney World, I finally found out who Katniss ended up with: Peeta or Gale.

But I'm not going to tell you what happens. I believe that if you're a true Hunger Games fan, you'll want to read it for yourselves anyway. But I will say, I was really kind of disappointed in the final book. There was nothing of the Hunger Games in there, very little challenge for survival and feats of mind and body. In my opinion, Katniss, who I had always felt was a little bit of a bad-ass, got a little soft in this book. Like the fight was gone from her and she never really got it back. I wanted to see that fire again, have her go out as the ultimate heroine.

So, without giving away anything about the plot, my thoughts were...I sort of wish I'd stopped reading with book two. Or maybe—and of course I'd prefer this—that the third book did the other two justice.

What did you guys think of Mockingjay? Have you read The Hunger Games yet? Are you going to read it?

5x5,
B.