By Suzanne Collins

Overview: The first book in this series is amazing! It’s super suspenseful and exciting, very entertaining! This book would definitely be better for people ages 13 and up. If you’ve heard of this before, you know that the premise is very violent so expect a lot of blood and violent content. Just be prepare if you are squeamish at all!

What’s it about? Every year, one “Tribute” is selected from the 13 districts of Panem by the Capitol, who forces the children to fight to the death in an arena. When Katniss Everdeen’s sister is chosen, Katniss volunteers to take her place and has to fight for her life with only a few supplies and her own survival skills.

My thoughts: I thought the first book was really good. The whole survival-in-the-arena part of the book was really fun to read, but I think the environment was too suited to Katniss’s skills, too “regular forest” to be an arena meant for the entertainment of the eccentric Capitol citizens. I also thought that Collins should have added at least a little more of a backstory on how Panem came to be originally. *Spoiler approaching* The other books were not very good at all, however. In the second book, Katniss participates in the Hunger Games again, which is such an obvious sequel that it’s kind of annoying. But I mean, what else would she write about? At least this time the arena was actually an imaginative place. I didn’t like the way Collins added more romance stuff too. The third book was the worst. Katniss spends half the book cooped up in a bunker as the “spokesperson” for a resistance effort, just hanging out and dressing up for photo shoots. In the second half, Katniss and a bunch of other people run through the streets of the Capitol fighting people, but somehow it still manages to be boring. Oops… I think I ranted for too long.