Book Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

To be completely honest; I wasn't all that thrilled with how this book was going along until I got about 2/3 of the way through it. It just felt like the author had run out of good ideas for the book. It seemed as if she was just retelling the first story with the changing of a few names and changing a very small part about the games themselves. I guess what I'm saying is that the book seemed very slow to me.

Having said that, I am totally happy with the book as a whole now that I am done with it. Once I got into the last third of the book the rest of the buildup and story started to make more sense. I hate when books start out kind of slow because I have the tendency to lose interest and not want to finish them out. I'm glad that I didn't do that with this book. Collins found a way to bring it all back around with some pretty exciting action toward the end of the book. The ending of this book just leaves you waiting to see what is going to happen next.

The characters from the first book continued to develop nicely through this book and there were some interesting new characters inserted. It will be interesting to see how they all come together in the third book. My hope for the third book is that it is as gripping through the whole thing as this one was through the last third of the book.

Overall Rating: 4/5

The Hunger Games

After watching dozens and dozens of videos and reading a ton of blogs about how good this book, and series, was I decided it was time to pick it up and start reading it. I have to say that this book lived up to the expectations that I had for it. Often times when a book receives so much hype it has a hard time living up to it. This wasn't the case for "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. Collins does a wonderful job of transporting you into a world that I don't think any of us could imagine happening. You feel like you are there at the reaping and you are pouring your heart out with Katniss at what happens at the reaping. You are then pulled into the Capital with her and Peeta as they are preparing for the games. I was on the edge of my seat and turning pages as fast as I could once the hunger games started. I have to say that this book is excellent in terms of plot, character development, and readability. I must admit though, that I am curious as to where Collins is going to go with the next book in the series. She ended it at an interesting time in the story. I guess that's what keeps us book obsessed folks coming back for more though. If the second one is as good as the first one I will be pleasantly surprised and this series may end up being one of my favorites of all time.

Overall Rating: 5/5