Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games #2

When Katniss and Peeta pick up the berries in The Hunger Games, they don’t realize what they have started. They are the spark that has ignited a revolution. A revolution that the Capitol will go to brutal and ruthless extremes to suppress and end the way they did 75 years ago when District 13 rebelled. But Katniss didn’t do this on purpose; she and her mockingjay have become unwitting figureheads in the fight against their oppression. But the Capitol has a trick up its sleeve and no one Katniss and Peeta hold dear are safe.

This book was again brilliant, I couldn’t put it down once I started it I got so caught up that I stayed up late into the night reading it and came into work tired and a bit melancholy the next day. If you are looking for a feel good read this is not the book for you. However, if you are looking for a fantastic, emotional and heartrending story with characters that come off the page and remain with you, then this is definitely the book for you.

Although I didn’t think this book was as good as The Hunger Games (the first in the trilogy) this book deserved all 5 feathers. It showed the characters getting growing up maturing from frightened children in the first book, to more mature young adults in this one. Just like The Hunger Games the writing sucks you in, it is first person POV through Katniss’s eyes, but that just means you are closer to what’s happening and get to feel all her highs and lows with her.

I think the reason I preferred The Hunger Games> was because the time she spends through the games are so intense and you are learning everything for the first time, experiencing the brutality and the injustice up close and personal. And Rue, the scene when she dies in the first book was so heartbreaking, so emotional, I still get a bit teary eyes when I think about it. But, when they have to go back into the games for the Quarter Quell, it just doesn’t have that impact anymore and although there are plenty of times when this book is truly sad, nothing quite comes close to the pointless, brutal and sad murder of Rue, and Katniss's reaction.

Now the Peeta and Gale conflict, I am firmly on Team Peeta. He is just...perfect and they have been through so much together. He is kind, loving, tough, and completely devoted to Katniss, he would literally die for her, and equally she would die for him, though not for the same reasons, I am really hoping that it ends with them as a couple. Although at this point I am doubting the likelihood of any kind of conventional happy ending. I feel however, that I must put in a few words for Gale as well because I do like him, but we just don’t see as much of him he is always on the periphery, so we don’t actually get that much page time for him to state his case. Maybe the next book will change that, but for now I am rooting for Peeta.

So, this is a really great book in a fantastic trilogy and I can’t wait to see how it ends. Anyone who hasn’t read these books really needs to give them a try, I am not normally a fan of YA, but these books are so good that they seem to ascend the usual annoyances I find with the genre.