Rita

I was so looking forward to reading this and I was not disappointed! It gave me everything I wanted and more I didn't even think of. I knew the bones of Haymitch's story from reading the original trilogy of course, yet reading it was still engaging, emotional, and surprisingly surprising. It was fun seeing people we know in District 12, and later in the Capitol, though I do wonder if maybe there were too many once we got into the games. Spoilers on who they are here, but seeing how involved Beetee, Wiress, and Mags were in Haymitch's games makes me wonder if most of the reaping done in Catching Fire was completely rigged, since Haymitch would have gone in if Peeta hadn't volunteered, or if their inclusion here was mostly fanservice. If it was rigged, that's pretty cool. If it's fanservice, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Also, I want to read an entire book on Mags' life please.

I only knocked down half a star because of the overuse of "The Raven" throughout. At first, it was cool to see where Lenore Dove got her name and she symbolism of the lost Lenore who would haunt Haymitch forever, but by the end (where it was used A LOT) I completely skipped reading the poem parts in the middle. I think it would have been fine to maybe throw in a short quote in there once or twice, but we didn't need as much of the poem as we got, and I say that as someone who LOVES "The Raven."

Bring on any more sequels Suzanne! I would read 71 more books of each Hunger Games we haven't seen.

Started out ok and then completely fell apart for me. Millie is so unlikeable and dumb and then the twist happens and lasts way too long explaining itself. Closest I've come to DNFing a book in a long time.

Absolutely brilliant mystery. Just when I thought I had it all figured out, everything was flipped upside-down. I did manage to guess the final twist, but even that was done really well. Favorite read of the year so far.

Picked this up after listening to the author give the keynote at a conference. Four stars for the awesome content, minus half a star for the existential dread.

I wanted to like this far more than I did, but alas. I roll my head at the weird prose, all the characters in this book and their horrible decisions, and cheap unearned twists.