The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Every time I saw a review for this book in my head I would groan and go: "Not this book again!" After being guilted into reading this by a twitter friend, I put myself on the very lonnng (translation: 2 months!) waiting list at the library. When it was finally my turn to read it, I still procrastinated opening it up. I think I was afraid it wouldn't live up to all of its hype.  Much like the Maze Runner by James Dashner and Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer it surpassed any expectations I had of it, and now I understand why everyone is so in love with this series.

The Story:

I'm not even sure where to begin with this one!  Katniss Everdeen lives in the poorest district of  Panem, which used to be the United States before the districts waged war on the capitol. In order to ensure peace, the capitol devised the Hunger Games-once a year the district would send a boy and a girl aged 12-18 to take place in the annually televised event.  The location and contestants may change every year, but one thing never changes and that's the rules: kill or be killed.  When Katniss's younger sister Prim is chosen through the lottery system to represent their district, Katniss knows she has to take her place and volunteers to go instead.

My Thoughts: 
So much more goes into this book then the synopsis provides us with. I don't know what it is about these Young Adult Dystopian books, but I always get ravenously hungry  & feel the need to shower a million times while reading them-probably because the characters never seem to be clean enough, or have enough food to eat. The only reason I didn't finish this book in one sitting is because when I started it, I had a horrible sinus headache. Even with the headache, I wanted to keep on reading-which is unusual-normally I can't concentrate on anything. On my second sitting this book managed to keep me from napping when I got home from work-something that I thought was impossible to do!

I loved the layers this story had. On the surface it was a survival of the fittest story-but if you looked deeper, you could see it was about finding out who you are, what your strengths are and how they can help you make tough decisions and deal with tragedy in life. I liked how Katniss grew as the book progressed. In the beginning I didn't really like her, but as the story grew and we found out more about her I found myself cheering her on. I have to admit that there were more then a few times I found myself cheering and crying out loud during parts of this book. This book was a roller coaster of emotions! I can't wait to read the next books in the series. This is really a book for all ages. I would do a sigh meter, but it somehow feels wrong to do this for an 18 year old. :)

 

I read this book as apart of the Support Your Local Library Challenge hosted by J Kayes Book Blog.