Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

a book review by Paige Boehk

Katniss and Peeta have won the 74th annual Hunger Games and have returned to district twelve with Haymitch.  Katniss should be celebrating for even being alive, but she has upset the leaders in the Capitol by rebelling against their decision to only have one victor and forcing them to take both her and Peeta.  Katniss goes on the victor's tour through all the twelve districts, seeing all the parents of the kids they either killed or helped out in the game.  There were uprisings because of Katniss and her rebel ways.  When she gets home, back to district twelve, life is much different.  She's in the victor's village eating all the food she'd ever need, feeling bad because the rest of her district barely has food and she's set for life.

Things change when Katniss is thrown back into the arena -- the girl in the ring, the girl on fire.  The second book in The Hunger Games trilogy really shows how desperate the Capitol is to hold off a revolution.  Suzanne Collins has written a sequel which is better than the first book, which you rarely see. You'll read an awesome book and wait patiently for the sequel; when you finally read it, it's just not as good as the first book.  As the reader, I was excited and hopeful for Katniss, just rooting her on as the book went along.  For such a tragic and horrible world they live in, Katniss is real, even without a special gift like all the other books, except maybe her talent with a bow and arrow.  And not because she was a victor in the Hunger Games but because she was poor before the games and needed to hunt to survive.

Katniss is more grown up in this book, just by seeing how hard it is to kill people that she has gotten to know.  She also shows a lot of uniqueness and independence when she criticizes the people of the Capitol for stuffing their faces and then taking pills to make themselves throw up.  Or with her realization that this isn't just about her but about the good of the people in all the districts.

Just because this book is intended for a younger audience doesn't mean anyone other than young adults can read it.  Be hip -- read Catching Fire, the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy.


Find it in YA FIC Collins, S.