Mockingjay

* Warning - Major Spoilers Contained in this Review! *

Author: Suzanne Collins

One-sentence summary: Katniss Everdeen is faced with the choice to be the champion of a war against the Capitol while also dealing with the even more cruel atrocities committed by war parties against those she loves.

B.A.D. Girls Book Rating: 8

Our favorite thing about it: As with the first two installments, we loved the thrilling story as well as the wonderful and insightful writing style.

Our least favorite thing about it: We unanimously agreed that the end of the book felt rushed and we felt unsatisfied with a few major points that were glossed over.

Main Topics of Discussion: War, Violence, Love, Redemption, Tragedy, Sacrifice, Justice

Our favorite quote: “Finally, he can see me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly.”

Notes: First and foremost, we felt that the last section of the book (everything after Katniss’s big moment with the bow and arrow), too briefly wrapped up several major plot points that had been brewing during the whole book and in some cases, the whole series. Specifically, Katniss’s decision between Gayle and Peeta (although a satisfactory choice, in our opinion) was given scarcely two sentences. This was an issue that was a huge part of all three books and was wrapped up with very little elaboration. We had the same complaint about Peeta’s recovery from his mind/memory issues and his reuniting with Katniss. There was very little discussion of how Peeta and Katniss rekindled their romance after their forced mental separation in the last book. It just seemed too rushed to us.

We also discussed how this last book seems much more violent than the first two because of the scale of the violence. However, we acknowledged that this was because the last book is about war whereas the first two are about an allegory or a micro-war played out in the Hunger Games. More violence, although disturbing, makes sense in the context of the book. In fact, the nature of violence on both sides of this war just makes the poignant point that there are no innocent parties in a war. Katniss (and others) assumed that “their” side was just and blameless and that was definitely not the case. Both sides committed atrocities as do all parties that engage in any war.

The death of Katniss’s sister was so tragic to us, not just because it was someone she was close to, but because the first book starts out with Katniss making a major sacrifice to keep her sister from danger…Katniss volunteers for the Hunger Games. This makes her death that much more tragic, but also brings an interesting circular quality to the stories.

For some reason, we were all a little shocked (and saddened) by Finnick’s death. Some of us assumed that either Peeta or Gayle might die at some point in this final book and were surprised that one of them didn’t die. We were also shocked and frankly, confused by Katniss’s decision to vote for the Hunger Games for the children of the capitol. We did not understand if there was an underlying rebellious theme there that we didn’t see or if she was truly voting that way because she wanted revenge. We wish there had been a little more insight into this decision, which seemed very out of character for Katniss.

So, overall we still truly enjoyed the conclusion to this series, but we had great expectations that were, in some cases, not exactly met. To us, it was still a powerful story, a truly creative way to write about the realities and complexities of war, and a genuinely exciting story to read.

Memorable Meeting Moments: The discussion of this book, which was not even a book club choice, took place spontaneously at the meeting for The Other Wes Moore at Stephanie’s house. We had all eagerly awaited the release of this book and had completed it by this meeting, so we decided to discuss it.

What We Ate: See notes on the meeting for The Other Wes Moore.