Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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I read The Hunger Games back in 2010, and I need to be honest about what it did to me: it planted a flag. A girl, an arena, a fight to the death, a country watching — I have been chasing that exact electric feeling in books ever since, and eventually I stopped chasing and wrote my own deadly-trials story. This book is the reason the genre I write in exists.

The spoiler-free setup (for the time capsule): in the ruins of North America, the Capitol punishes its districts with an annual televised fight to the death between children. When Katniss Everdeen’s little sister is chosen, Katniss volunteers. It remains one of the cleanest, cruelest inciting incidents ever written.

What I Loved About The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

It’s a classic of deadly-trials storytelling, full stop — the book that laid the foundation for an entire generation of writers, romantasy authors very much included. Collins’ pacing is ruthless in the best way: present tense, short chapters, every choice costing something. And Katniss set the mold for the heroine with agency — she volunteers, she strategizes, she acts. (Passive protagonists are my number-one fiction complaint; Katniss is the antidote the genre has been drawing from ever since.)

I think a lot of it still holds up. The arena sections in particular are load-bearing walls of the genre now — you can trace a straight line from them to half the romantasy on my shelf, dragons and vampire tournaments included.

What I Didn’t Love About The Hunger Games

Full honesty: I haven’t revisited it since that first read, so this is a review of a book and of a memory. Ask me after a re-read whether every page holds — but the fact that I’m still thinking about it sixteen years later is its own answer.

Final Thoughts on The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My final score: 5 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Do I recommend this book? 👍 Yes — it’s the source code.

If deadly trials are your genre too, the modern descendants are all reviewed here: Fourth Wing, The Serpent and the Wings of Night, and the rest of the shelf.

🔥 A Deadly Trials Romantasy on Kindle Unlimited: The Ash Trials

Speaking of that straight line from Katniss: My romantasy novel The Ash Trials is on Kindle Unlimited: deadly trials, a slow-burn romance, and a heroine with everything to prove.