The Hunger Games Book Review by ChristineMM

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins

Genre: Fiction, Young Adult, Dystopian Fiction

Publication: Scholastic, 2008








My Star Rating: 5 stars out of 5

Summary Statement: Rivoting from Page One, Lots of Adventure and Suspense with a Strong Female Hero

Three years after its publication I finally read Hunger Games. Published as a young adult novel, its popularity has spread and the book has fallen into, and been loved by adults as well.

I was hooked right from page one. Main character Katniss Everdeen's name is pulled from the lottery and she must participate in The Hunger Games. But what are the Hunger Games? We don't yet know, and I won't tell you either, as finding out is part of the fun of reading the book.

The Hunger Games of Panem which is the main plot of this book, is gruesome,  so this is truly a book for teens, or those tweens who don't seem bothered by glimpsing the dark side of humanity, injury and death. It's nail-biting suspense reading, the type that keeps you awake reading yet another page and more and more chapters after you'd planned to go to sleep.

The plot seems straightforward and single tracked until glimpses of something more complex begin to peek through. The reading is easy and this is sure to be a winner with anyone who likes dystopian fiction or anyone who just likes escape reads that pull you in. Collins did a fantastic job developing the character Katniss, a heroine who every reader can't help but love and root for as she tries to win The Hunger Games.


Some things I personally enjoyed were that Katniss supported her family by poaching, hunting illegally and also by wildcrafting edible plants from the forest. Her mother is an herbalist, using wildcrafted herbs, and a healer, and is the community's only health care practitioner. Her sister works as an apprentice helping her mother, so healing and wildcrafting are discussed frequently in this book.
I highly recommend this book for young adult readers. This is also the type of book that typical "non-readers" and reluctant readers will happily read.

Note for parents: This book provides some good talking points about alcoholism, drug use and addiction, reality TV and suffering for audience's entertainment, dressing in a sexy manner or showing nudity in order to entice and gain favor with TV viewers, and ethical questions about when it may be seen as acceptable to intentionally break government law (black market selling and poaching). Those are some topics in the book that parents need to realize exist before putting this in the hands of children who are not yet young adults. Parents should consider reading the book first to see if it is appropriate for their kids. I say this also because sometimes when a movie is released, younger kids want to read the book than necessarily are ready for scary content. Spoiler alert: you should know that murder for sport is what the hunger games is about (even though doing so is forced upon the game players, it's what makes the book full of suspense and action).

Review updated with more details 9/06/11.

Disclosure: I bought this book. See my blog's full disclosure statement at the top of my blog's sidebar for full disclosure information.