This week I’m going to review The Hunger Games! I feel like I am one of the only people who has never read The Hunger Games (or seen the movies), but it’s been on my list forever. It was super popular when I was in fourth-fifth grade, and people continued to love it throughout middle school. When I was younger, I went through a phase of only reading historical books, so I never read them because the genre didn’t interest me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve branched out with the genres I read. However, I always felt like I missed the train with The Hunger Games, so I just never read them. I finally binge-read the first book in one night, and I really wanted to talk about it, especially since so many people are familiar with the series.

Given that most people have read or at least seen the movies, I’m going to discuss spoilers. I also am approaching this review slightly differently. Since I’m the one who needed to read this book, there’s no point in me advocating for you all to read it, but I thought a more discussion-based post would be fun since I know I love to talk about popular books.

Going into this book, all I knew about it was there are some districts, they fight in some competition, and people are either team Peeta or Gale.

First of all, this book is way more intense than I thought it was going to be, and I’m honestly a little surprised that everyone I knew read this when they were nine or ten years old. I mean, the characters in this die in some pretty horrifying ways. The one career tribute was mauled to death by the dead tributes they turned into wolve-creatures. That was actually horrifying. Also, Rue’s death was so sad to me, even though her character was only in the spotlight for such a short time. The author really emphasized how sweet and young she was, and I definitely fell for it. Reading it now the story seemed age-appropriate, but when I was younger, a lot of the plot would’ve gone over my head. The concept of the entire world was also so cool. While all the futuristic components and districts seem like science fiction, I also liked how the world still felt realistic.

Many people also focus on the romance aspect of these books. Since I’ve only read the first book, I don’t think I can give a concrete opinion on the love triangle. I did think it was sad that a huge part of why Peeta and Katniss even survived together was that people watching were so into the fake relationship. All those kids died year after year, but the out-of-touch capital citizens and the richer district’s citizens just liked the love story.

Gale’s character was basically just best friend vibes only, but I can definitely understand why people like him. He really was there for Katniss’ family throughout the backstory and after she volunteered. However, Peeta’s character is also so nice. The bread story from when they were younger is actually really sweet. I kinda feel bad that he was just authentically acting in love while Katniss was pretending (although I don’t think she was fully fully pretending). I don’t think you can blame Katniss for that since she was told from the beginning to act like she was in love with Peeta, and it was either that or die so….

Katniss, as a character, is so oblivious about both Peeta and Gale. She also can be low-key rude at times, which I thought was funny. There was one scene where they were trying to hunt for food in the games, and I guess Peeta was walking loudly. She turned to him and was like take off your shoes. He protested, so she took them off too. But then in her head, she goes, even though I wasn’t even walking loudly. I loved when she made comments like that because it just made me laugh.

Going into the second book, here are my predictions! Feel free to laugh at me guessing what will happen with my limited knowledge (somehow I have never been spoiled, so I genuinly don’t know anything). I think that Gale is going to be really upset about the whole fake relationship aspect, and it’s going to also get awkward with Peeta. I do know that some sort of rebellion comes, but I have no idea how that will happen. I’m excited to see them continue to put up the whole star-crossed lovers charade, as I thought that was so funny.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading it, and I understand why it’s such a popular series. I will definitely be finishing the series, as I couldn’t stop reading the first one until I finished.

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