I've been putting off writing this review because I’m not sure how to effectively get across my years worth of thoughts about this book. I read this book for the first time when I was 13, and I’ve read it (and the rest of the series) again almost every year since. It’s my favorite book, and being able to grow up with it like that is an experience that solidified it there. Every time I read it I cry more than the last, and I still pick up on fun new angles to think about things through. It’s been one of my biggest special interests for most of my remembered life.

The writing is for sure young adult, but it’s grounded and really works for the setting and story. You can tell Katniss is a normal teenager (as normal as she can be in D12), and that makes everything so much worse. The way her personality affects the narration is delightful, and she’s a really good example of an unreliable narrator that isn’t a villain. She just has normal teenager low self-esteem. She’s sarcastic and smart and selfless and so so deeply kind even though she’d like us to think otherwise.

The present-tense first-person POV is perfect for this story, it keeps you deep in the action at all times alongside Katniss. The fast pacing is also very beneficial for that, and I’ve devoured the book in a day multiple times simply because it goes by so fast.

There isn't a side character I don't have appreciation for. Peeta, Gale, Haymitch, and Prim are obviously the main ones, and I love all of them for a lot of reasons. Peeta is such a perfect complement to Katniss, and his association with baking and warmth and safety and spring is very poignant within the overall themes of the series. Gale, inversely, is a foil to Katniss. He's angry and says what she doesn't out loud, and his association to food, hunting, isn't something done without loss is life (unlike, baking). I think his development across the series is vastly underappreciated in favor of being team Peeta or hating Gale for doing That One Thing later on. Haymitch is also a very good foil for Katniss, in an "oh shit I'm going to end up like him if I don't check myself" way. And also an "I fear he's the only guy who truly understands me and I hate him" way. Prim, for being the impetus of the plot, is shockingly absent from the novel. She only gets a couple scenes at the beginning, and the vast majority of our conception of her is Katniss's impression of her—which isn't to say that's inaccurate, but that she haunts the narrative very well. Everything Katniss does is traced back to Prim.

Rue, on the other hand, gets a lot of screentime. She is the heart of this book and it is horrific to read. A lot of our relationship in this book with Prim is conceptual. We know she's 12, we know she would've been Reaped, and we know that that's bad. There's a layer of distance sort of created there with how little we see her, and also given that she wasn't Reaped. Rue was. And we see how she's the smallest of the Tributes, how she's so full of life, how she's not very good at what the Games want her to do (kill people), and how she gets killed because of that. We see her death altered to fit the message the Capitol wants to send. Rue works wonderfully as a character in her own right, as well as a representation of every child that could've been Reaped too young (which, as you get older, is all of them).

The Careers get a lot worse (in a good way) for me as I age. They're all in an age range of Katniss, and the only thing separating her from being one of them is just where she was born. There's already such an othering present in her perception of them, and watching it subtly break down culminating in her mercy-kill of Cato is very good. Yes, Cato is angry and violent and a killer and loves the Games, but he's a child. An indoctrinated child. And seeing his illusion break over the course of the book is gutting.

The Games themselves are masterful in concept and execution, and they scratch a narrative itch I've been unable to replicate anywhere else. The cruelty and the vouyerism and the spectacle of it all are horrific, and done perfectly in a way that it becomes so easy to find yourself slipping into Capitol-isms if you aren't careful. The urge to put characters into Situations now comes with guilt and consideration about how normalizing and participating in the play of it all can affect your perception of things. (I do think it's entirely fine to make HG AUs, or OCs, or whatever. We're all playing toys and it's fictional. But I do think it's very interesting to examine how they're interacted with in regards to the themes of the original work! This also applies to a lot of how the marketing and larger pop-culture interact with it, like the Hanging Tree radio mix, or the Capitol makeup palette, or focusing on Peeta vs Gale over literally anything else.)

Everything in this book is intentional and extremely efficient, there isn't a scene that's wasted. The amount of care that went into crafting it is palpable. The meticulous use of the three act structure (and further into a noticeable three blocks within each act) is something I really fixated on for a while while I was big into learning about plot structures, and isn't something I see really anyone talking about!

I think it's something everyone should read at least once, and it's for sure a modern classic. I've enjoyed it in a lot of different ways over my many years of rereading it, but the amount of enjoyment I get from it is equally high every time. It's timeless and endlessly interpretable and relevant, and easy (prose-wise, not necessarily content-wise) to read if you want something quick, but you can dedicate yourself to pouring over it if you'd rather, too. I love you The Hunger Games :)