Thank you so much to NetGalley, HarperCollins, and Victoria S. Walsh for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I started this book and finished it in one day because I was hooked at the beginning!! The Iron Hex does a great job of showing representation in a genre that doesn't have a ton of plus sized main characters, and I think it definitely delivered on that front! I also enjoyed the story's plot and where it ended up towards the end of the book.

There were some points that I did have a few gripes with as I was reading. The main thing for me was that the magic system and world building wasn't really fully fleshed out. When I read a fantasy or romantasy book, I personally enjoy the world building and long build ups to get us to where we are in the story at present. This book didn't deliver that for me, but this is just a personal preference! If you enjoy stories without a lot of world building, I think you would really enjoy this book!

Overall, I think this book would've hit home for me if it was like 100 or even 200 more pages that was building upon the world, magic system, etc. I think this was a good debut from Walsh, and I'm excited to see what else she puts out after this!

Every time I finish a Hunger Games book, I am kicking myself in the foot at how I didn't read these sooner!! Mockingjay is no exception. This book was so amazing and I am so glad that I am finally getting around to reading these because of how much this book still holds up today, and how we can look at what Katniss goes through, and relate it to what is going on in the world at the moment.

Also, this book tore me apart in ways that I didn't expect because I've only seen the main 4 movies previous to reading this for the first time. I love how much more in depth of an experience we get with Katniss being our narrator, and not really looking at this from and outside perspective. I've said this for all of the books, but for this one it truly makes you more wary of the resistance leaders like Coin, and gives you more of a perspective of where Katniss's head was at throughout the whole thing.

Overall, this book made me feel so many feelings even though I knew what the main things that were gonna happen because of the movie lol. I feel like it added a whole new layer to what I already know as the Hunger Games, and I am now so STOKED to read the prequels for the first time not knowing anything going into them other than who they are about!! 🤭

I listed to this audiobook right after listening to Tom Lake so that is probably going to sway my view on this book, but overall I didn't really get into it like I did Tom Lake. I'm gonna be honest here when I say I think it's just because it was a man as the narrator 😭 I couldn't stand some of his inner dialogue at times, and because of this I would just get checked out of the story and then pay attention again after a minute or two and be confused lol. Overall, I do think the story was pretty okay, though I think there could've been a little bit more substance to the story if it were told from Maeve's perspective instead of Danny's.