Book Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Not since the final Harry Potter have I so anticipated a book release.  I loved, loved, loved The Hunger Games and Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) and could not wait to read Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games).  When it finally arrived, the first thing I did was open it to the middle and inhale, and it smelled wonderful.  I think the smell of a new, highly anticipated book gives me more pleasure than a bouquet of a dozen roses.

I am honestly still not sure what I think of Mockingjay.  Did it blow my socks off, as foreseen?  Yes!  Did I like it?  Not sure.  Do I recommend reading it?  Yes, I think so, with one caveat:  the audience for this book, at least as far as content, should be a little older than the first two.  While both THG and CF include heavy themes that require the reader to really engage and contemplate such issues as freedom, totalitarianism, and self- sacrifice, and certainly contain violence, Mockingjay ups the ante.  There is scene after scene of bizarre and grisly violence and [spoiler alert] several beloved characters die difficult (to say the least) deaths.  The author has said that she wishes to give a clear view of the realities and consequences of war and violence.  So, while some parts are difficult to read, I am encouraging my 9th-grade son to read it, but will probably have my Middle School son (who has a vivid imagination) to hold off for a year or two.

Mockingjay opens with our Katniss a broken girl.  She is given to avoidance and isolation and has taken to hiding out in various nooks around the District 13 underground.  Again, I believe the author is trying to illustrate war's effects by giving Katniss some form of PTSD.  But, the resistance needs its Mockingjay, so Katniss must rise to the occasion, and rise she does.  She will never again be the same (nearly) innocent girl we met in THG, so she must learn to change and grow under the horrific conditions of the totalitarian government of Panem and now the war between the government and the rebels.

I am not sure that I would call Mockingjay a satisfying conclusion to the series, but it is definitely a conclusion, and while I do not feel it measures up to the first two in the series, it is very much worth reading to find out what happens to Panem and the characters we have come to love such as Katniss, Gale and Peeta.  And speaking of Gale and Peeta, I will not say how this love triangle is resolved, but I will say that I was disappointed by how the author dealt with the man that was not chosen by Katniss.  Both Gale and Peeta were deep and rich characters and the one not chosen was written off with what I thought was a perfunctory sentence dismissing what he had meant to Katniss and the connection they shared throughout the books.

My conclusion is that Suzanne Collins is an amazingly gifted author.  Though I was disappointed with aspects of Mockingjay, this series overall is fantastic and I love how the books stretch the mind and make  the reader think about our relationship to our government, our responsibility for our own destiny, self-sacrifice, and the difficult choices we may have to make for the ones we love.


If you want to read another perspective, see Jen Robinson's review here.  Jen Robinson is a book blogger whose opinion I highly respect and if you are a teacher or have children still living at home, you should follow her blog.  I was glad to see that her views about the age-appropriateness of Mockingjay were pretty much the same as mine.