- Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian
- Medium: Physical Book
- 24.03.24 – 21.04.24
The prequel to the “Hunger Games” trilogy. We follow a young President Snow, who is a student at the academy and becomes the mentor of Lucy Gray Baird from district twelve during the 10th Hunger Games.
The first word that I can think of to describe this book is: disappointing. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me first talk about the things I DID like.
I really enjoyed getting to know the world of Panem more. As it is set 64 years before Katniss’ time, the games are vastly different. We see the introductions Snow makes into the Hunger Games as a student. I always enjoy getting to know more lore about fictional worlds that I like.
Lucy Gray is definitely the best part of the book. She is smart and calculating. I really liked her free spirit. Although she falls in love with Snow, she is smart enough to realize when his character shifts and escapes when she senses danger. I really wish we could have had a dual POV with Lucy Gray.
My biggest problem was the character of young President Snow. I feel like this book was a sold as “protagonist turns evil” type of plot. But Snow was a lousy guy from the beginning; he’s cruel, arrogant and self-serving but at the same time so incredibly self-pitying. It just gets annoying and repetitive. I thought we would see some character development in him, see how he turned out to be the bad guy in “the Hunger Games”. But most of the book is just in his head, him telling us about his hardships, but we never really feel for him.
I was excited to maybe see him struggle with his conscience, but he is pro-Games from the beginning. The only reason he ever doubts the games is because of Lucy Gray. But then he never really doubts the games themselves, he just wants to save Lucy Gray. On top of that, he is a rather boring character (esp. compared to Katniss Everdeen).
The “romance” was also not a romance at all, but rather a toxic obsession. He gets very jealous early on and always sees Lucy Gray more as an object, that he wants to own. It was unpleasant to read.
In general, I was disappointed in how boring this book really is. Up until the Games, I would have given this book 4 starts. But the last third is so lengthy and does nothing over long stretches to the plot. I was excited to see all the drama play out in the end, but the execution of it was kind of anticlimactic.
Alexandra's Bookshelf 