Book Review | Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Join Katniss Everdeen on her battle as she unites the districts in the ultimate end to the Hunger Games series, and the rule of the Capitol.

Mockingjay is the third instalment in The Hunger Games series and the last book that follows Girl on Fire, Katniss Everdeen. You can catch up on my reviews on The Hunger Games and Catching Fire as this review will contain spoilers from the previous two books.

About Mockingjay

Katniss Everdeen has done the impossible. She's survived not one, but two Hunger Games.

Rescued from the Quarter Quell, Panem is at the cusp of a rebellion by District 13, a district once thought to be gone but has been thriving underground for decades. Everyone around her seems to have played a part in the rise of the rebellion, yet Katniss doesn't have a clue.

Katniss, unknowingly becoming the face of the rebellion, makes or breaks their plan. Katniss must put aside her feelings of distrust towards everyone who had a role in the rise of the rebellion, be willing to become their pawn and take responsibility for the loss of lives so that they can change the course of the future of Panem. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay, no matter the personal cost.

Mockingjay Review

Once again, Collins's writing skills are not to be undermined. Her portrayal of Katniss's pain, trauma and grief was realistic and simply understood by someone who has not gone through such hardship.

While there are still the same few characters that I've grown to adore over the past two books, they're slightly different in Mockingjay. Without spoiling too much, I found some of them slightly unlikeable at parts of the story where their fear took over any reasonable thinking. That being said, to see them grow throughout the book is a wonderful sight. The payoff for their dramatic outbursts and slight annoyance is worth it in the end.

There are a few significant deaths in Mockingjay that don't go unnoticed. However, their deaths were underplayed, rushed and felt anti-climatic. There wasn't time for the pain to settle in before Katniss immediately went on to doing something else. It felt like these characters had to die, just for a big jaw-dropping moment that kind of fell flat in the end.

The love triangle is not so much of a triangle.

To be frank, when I first read this trilogy about ten years ago, I was unabashedly Team Gale. There wasn't a single bone in my body that rooted for Peeta. Gale's strong, reliable, resourceful and understands Katniss in and out. Compared to Gale, what does Peeta have? Frosting cakes?

How wrong I was.

It's clear to me this time around that there wasn't a competition at all. Maybe in The Hunger Games there was a triangle, but it's so obviously just a line now.

I felt that the love triangle might have been dragged on for too long but at the same time, Katniss's love life was mentioned more of an afterthought rather than it being the main plot line so I didn't mind it too much.

Panem is kind of boring without the Capitol.

As Panem is in the middle of a war, Panem has rid of the year's Hunger Games. With the districts rebelling against the Capitol, there are no children to be sent for the annual Games. Without the modern technology the Capitol and thus the Games provide, there isn't much that we don't already know about Panem. Therefore, I found the world-building to be quite unsatisfactory.

And District 13 is too dull and stringent a place for me to be remotely interested in.

The Mockingjay might be fast but Mockingjay is slow.

Again, without the Games, everything is a little slower-paced. It's basically a waiting game for who's going to surrender first. To be honest, I lost interest about three-quarters of the way through and ditched this book for a few weeks before I forced myself to pick it up again.

★★★☆☆ (3/5)

Mockingjay was an interesting end to the Hunger Games series. It does feel ideal and on par with the series so it made sense to end the way it did. However, compared to the first two novels in the instalment, this one was a little more uneventful and slow-moving.

If you'd like to read Mockingjay for yourself, you can purchase a copy here.

About Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins is the author of the best-selling Underland Chronicles series, which started with Gregor the Overlander.

Her groundbreaking young adult novels, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, were New York Times bestsellers, received wide praise, and were the basis for four popular films. She returned to the world of Panem with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

Year of the Jungle, her picture book based on the year her father was deployed in Vietnam, was published in 2013 to great critical acclaim. To date, her books have been published in 53 languages around the world.