Main Characters: Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark
Series: The Hunger Games series, Book 2

Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with Peeta Mellark. But it had been a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion.Where do I start with this book? I read this book and I kept right on reading until I was completely finished with it. I ate this book up! It was like riding on an emotional roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain. My emotions were up, down and went round and round. I knew that the drama was going to keep right on coming and Collins sure didn’t disappoint.

In this book, Katniss and Peeta are living their new lives as winners of the Hunger Games. They both live in Victor Village where their only neighbor is …Haymitch. They have everything they could ever want and they’re not afraid to share the wealth around. Katniss still hunts for game to help Gale and his family out since Gale now has to work in the mines, six days a week. She also makes it a point to spend money in town so that she can do her little part in sharing the wealth she acquired from winning The Hunger Games.

Just when things are starting to settle into a pattern that works for Katniss, she gets a surprise visit from none other than President Snow and that visit sets off the rest of the adventure in this story.

It is in this book that I totally became a Katniss fan. I mean, I liked her well enough in The Hunger Games but it wasn’t until this book that I became an actual fan. In The Hunger Games, I felt her pain at being such a young girl and having to take on the caring of your entire family. She’s only 16 in that book and yet she’s got a lot of burdens to shoulder all by herself so that her younger sister, Prim can have what she needs to have to live. This isn’t easy when you don’t have a family bakery always supplying the food in your belly or any other kind of family business. It’s easy to get good and pissed off at a government that would allow this to happen. While they’re living their lavish lifestyles in the Capitol, getting everything they need from the other districts..you’re sitting at home, trying to ration your food to last you the entire week because the only way that you can keep food in your bellies without having a job is by taking a tesserae but if you do that then your name goes into the lottery for The Hunger Games more times. Meaning, you have more chances of going into the Hunger Games by doing this.

It really sucks to be Katniss, right?

In this book, Katniss is thrown right back into a big ol’ pot of SUCKNESS. Things can’t just be easy for Katniss, she just has to keep playing the puppet to those bastards up at the Capitol and it’s no wonder she hates the Capitol so much. Things are made even murkier because she’s got all of this other stuff going on back at home. Like her and Gale’s complicated relationship. This is where the love triangle really takes place because in the first book, Gale isn’t in the book as much and even though he’s not in a huge chunk of this, his presence is felt.

It was in this book that my love for Peeta was sorely tested because I loved Gale too. I loved Gale and I also though that Gale and Katniss made sense. There’s history there and there’s a mutual love that they have for one another. Nobody knows Katniss the way that Gale does, nobody gets her the way that Gale does …until Peeta comes back into the picture. With Katniss and Peeta back in action together, it’s hard not to fall in love with the two of them.

Usually when the heroine of a book says things like this,

“Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable.”

…I get annoyed but in this case, I didn’t. In this book, I got a little worried for Peeta because I kept thinking, “Dammit Peeta, how the hell are you going to compete with this?” I wasn’t sure that he could and I’m kind of mad at Collins for making me doubt my love for Peeta. Just kidding (not really). LOL!

There’s no doubt about it, this is my favorite book in the series. I loved watching the story unfold some more in this one. I loved getting to know Gale more, I loved getting to know Peeta and Katniss more and I adored getting to know Finnick. I was such a skank because for part of the book I was Team Peeta, other parts of the book I was Team Gale and then a huge chunk of it, I was Team Finnick. Finnick was the bomb!

Especially in scenes like this:

Really, the combination of the scabs and the ointment looks hideous. I can’t help enjoying his distress.

“Poor Finnick. Is this the first time in your life you haven’t looked pretty?” I say.

“It must be. The sensation’s completely new. How have you managed it all these years?” he asks.

“Just avoid mirrors. You’ll forget about it,” I say.

“Not if I keep looking at you,” he says.”

Finnick was the bomb. I loved getting to know him, I loved all of the excitement he brought to the story. I kept wondering, can we trust this fool or what? I’m glad that we could because I would have hated to have been deceived by him.

This book brings more adventure and more action and I ate it all up. I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the first book and in the end, my love for one boy was signed, sealed and delivered because among so many things, he said this speech that moved me to tears.

“…I don’t want you forgetting how different our circumstaces are. If you die, and I live, there’s no life for me at all back in District Twelve. You’re my whole life.” Peeta says. “I would never be happy again. It’s different for you. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be hard. But there are other people who’d make your life worth living.”

“No one really needs me,” he says, and there’s no selfpity in his voice. It’s true his family doesn’t need him. They will mourn him, as will a handfull of friends. But they will get on…. I realise only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me.

“I do,” I say. “I need you.”

*sigh*

Oh Peeta. How can you not love this guy?

If you haven’t read this book then you must fix that soon because this book is great entertainment. Suzanne Collins has penned a series that is well written, exciting and will pull at your heart strings. You won’t want to miss out on this series and this book is just another great adventure with a cast of charming characters that you’ll want to hold close to your heart.

Pick it up, you won’t be sorry.

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