Wake up, girls! It’s time for the Hunger Games renaissance yet again! As an avid reader and massive fan of the books and movies, when Suzanne Collins announced that there would be a new book based on Haymitch’s games, I knew I needed to read it the second it came out. And read it I did; I finished the entire book in just two days, flipping through the pages at lightning speed with tears in my eyes the whole way through. And now, I NEED to get some opinions and feelings out, so while this will be a review, it will also be an opinion piece where I simply talk about everything, I found interesting about the book.
There will be spoilers in this review!!! Scroll down at your own risk! If you have not yet read the book, read it and then come back to this article so you can better understand everything!
Suzanne Collins is evil.
That is what I wrote in my Goodreads review of this book, and I think it rings absolutely true. Obviously, Suzanne is not an evil person, but what she does to her characters is truly the stuff of nightmares. This entire book seems like every time Suzanne had a bad day, she came home and took it out on Haymitch Abernathy. The book starts with a punch to the gut, finding out that Haymitch celebrates his birthday every year on reaping day, and with the knowledge of the later books, we know that he has to continue taking children to their deaths on his birthday every year. It takes the quote from Catching Fire “You never get off this train” to a whole new level, as he really is perpetually stuck on the train of despair and loss.
The Reaping
If there is one thing Suzanne Collins is amazing at, its subverting expectations. Going into the book, all readers know that Haymitch ends up in the 50th Hunger Games, but how he gets there is something I could not have ever imagined. The fact that Haymitch was not actually reaped, and the only reason he ended up in the games was because he was trying to protect his girlfriend, Lenore Dove, sent me into a tizzy. This just continues to play into the overall theme of propaganda and implicit submission, as we see just how curated the games actually are. This also made me think even more about the original trilogy of books, and just how unreliable of a narrator Katniss is, because all she knows about Haymitch’s games is what the Capitol wanted her to know.
The Tributes
For the second Quarter Quell, double the amount of tributes were reaped from each district, combining to be a total of 48 children that were sent into the arena to face their deaths. From District 12, we have Haymitch Abernathy, Wyatt Callow, Maysilee Donner, and Louella McCoy. But in a cruel twist of fate, Suzanne Collins did not allow each of these tributes to make it to the arena. Louella, the youngest of the four, was tragically killed during the tribute chariot parade, which then sparked Haymitch’s first act of rebellion as he brought her body in front of President Snow, forcing him to look at the horror he has inflicted upon children. It was this moment that sparked perhaps one of the most disturbing things that Suzanne has ever put into her books; Louella’s body double. Another child who looked similar to Louella, her face pumped with fillers to make her look more lively and an in-ear monitor for the Capitol to talk to her was presented to Haymitch, and he and the other District 12 tributes were forced to pretend like she was the little girl they had known all their lives who came with them from 12. Given that she looked almost identical to Louella, it was difficult for anyone else to see that she wasn’t the original child. So Haymitch and his fellow district 12 tributes came up with a nickname for this new child that was similar to Louella, choosing to call her Lou Lou so that none of the viewers of the games would be confused by a sudden name switch. When I first read this section of the book, I audibly gasped and felt sick to my stomach. The speed at which President Snow and the rest of the Capitol were able to simply replace and brainwash a child to replace Louella was mind boggling, and it made me wonder if they have ever done this before.
The Newcomers
One of my favorite parts of the book was getting to see the formation of the anti Career alliance; the Newcomers. Led by a twelve year old boy from District 3, Ampert (who is the son of Beetee, a victor we meet in Catching Fire), almost all of the tributes are either on the side of the Careers or the Newcomers. I found it incredibly interesting to get to see more of the pre-games process that the tributes go through in the Capitol, and I absolutely adored Ampert. Getting to know all the tributes better through Ampert was incredibly bittersweet; as you were reading you fell more and more in love with each of them and saw all of their personalities and bits of their districts cultures, but it was impossible to forget that every single one of them was bound to die, and the closer they were to Haymitch, the more traumatic their deaths were. Ampert especially had an incredibly brutal death, since it was him and Haymitch who plotted to destroy the arena. Being torn apart by carnivorous squirrels until there was nothing left but a small skeleton was an incredibly horrific way to go, and knowing Beetee had to watch his own son die in such a traumatic way was enough to make me close the book for a solid five minutes.
The Finale
If you are a massive Hunger Games fan like me, you are probably familiar with the infamous fan film published on Youtube about ten years ago that shows Haymitch’s games. This fan film led to me to enter this book with an idea of what I was getting myself into, but the best way to describe that film is by comparing it to what the Capitol would have allowed the districts and Capitol viewers to see; a version of the games that cuts out almost all of the rebellion. At the end of the fan film, we see Haymitch pull his trick with the force field and the axe, cementing himself as the winner of the 50th Hunger Games. But what we don’t see is everything leading up to it, and just how rebellious the ending of his games really was. Haymitch is overtaken by rage when facing the last career, as she just beheaded the young female tribute from district 6, Wellie. This moment in the book had me absolutely shocked, we’ve never seen anything quite so gruesome in all of the books or movies, and it really showed just how horrifically violent the games really were. Katniss got lucky, as while she saw death in her games, she never saw anything so horrible. So in Haymitch’s rage, when he thinks he’s dying with no other option, he decides one last time to try and paint his own poster and blow up the generator that controls the arena. This moment shows just how propagandized the Hunger Games really are, as Katniss, when she briefly watches Haymitch’s games in Catching Fire, never mentions this as being something that happened. It creates such a devastating narrative, showing the reader that all of Haymitch’s hardwork and rebellion was for nothing, and he would have to wait 24 more years for the spark he started to turn into a fire to burn the Capitol down.
Lenore Dove
I want to end this review/recap with one of my favorite aspects of the book, and that was my sweet girl, Lenore Dove. A member of the Covey who likely descended from Maude Ivory, Lenore Dove haunts the narrative almost as much as Lucy Gray. Her geese that she passed the love of them onto Haymitch, her adoration for music and poetry, and her easygoing and rebellious nature instantly made her a favorite of mine. As the book was reaching its close however, I began to get worried. I knew that Haymitch didn’t have anyone he loved left by the time of the 74th games, and Katniss had explicitly stated that his family and his girlfriend had been killed by Snow for his rebellion in the arena. Finally, after Haymitch had spent weeks in the Capitol being fed bread and milk and Lenore Dove had been held captive by Peacekeepers where she was starved almost to death, the pair reunited in a meadow outside of District 12. In one of the cruelest things I’ve ever read in my life, Haymitch fed his love gumdrops, which he thought were the ones he had bought for her before he went to the Capitol. However, the gumdrops turned out to be poisoned by Snow, and Lenore Dove, unable to throw up due to starvation, died in the arms of Haymitch. He wasn’t even able to join her in death, as the milk and bread he consumed for weeks in the Capitol made any poison that entered his system null. This moment broke me; the pair were so close to being able to live and grow old together, just for it to be taken away in the worst way imaginable. It did bring me some comfort knowing that Lenore Dove haunted Haymitch, and her ghost grew old right alongside him, but by the time we made it to the epilogue, I actually was hoping that Haymitch would die, so that he could finally reunite with everyone he lost. The epilogue was beautifully crafted, and it tied in the ongoing confusion of why Haymitch was raising geese at the end of Mockingjay perfectly; it was his way of healing.
Overall, this book was one of my favorites that I have read all year long. Suzanne Collins certainly knows how to create something incredibly devastating and so culturally aware in a way that causes her audience to think deeply about the world around them. It sounds a bit Capitol of me to say, but I really cannot wait for the movie to come out in 2026; I know it will be one of the most incredible pieces of media in years. Suzanne, I hope you always have something to say, and keep writing these incredible books.
“I don’t sing when I’m told. I sing when I have something to say.” – Lucy Gray Baird