Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)

Jul 12

About the book

Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic Press

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

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My review

Sunrise on the Reaping is a prequel, so we all knew how it would end. We also knew the broad strokes of Haymitch’s time in the arena thanks to the scene where Katniss and Peeta watch the recording in Catching Fire. Finally, we knew it was going to rip our hearts open. Turns out, we were right about those first and third things, but totally wrong about the second.

Perhaps my favorite part of rereading all the Hunger Games books before I finally picked up The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise was getting to see how much Suzanne Collins has grown as a writer since the original trilogy was published. Gone are all my quips and complaints (although it helps that these books are not in Katniss’ POV). And it feels bold to say, but I think Sunrise might actually be my favorite of the books, even if it’s hard to separate how much fun it is to read a prequel that deepens a beloved story vs the merits of any one book on its own.

To put it simply, I LOVED getting Haymitch’s story. He is smart and good and also just a teenage boy who wants to survive so he can get home to his girlfriend. His relationships with so many characters we come to know and love in Catching Fire were simultaneously fun and heartbreaking to witness. We always knew that Haymitch had been broken by his time in the arena, but until this book I had never spent much time really thinking about what that meant or how much backstory could be waiting for us.

And of course, Collins has much to say politically. The amount of depth we learn the Capitol has erased from the record, propaganda-style, is both astounding and entirely expected.

The only problem is, now I am feral for Collins to write the events of the original Hunger Games trilogy from Haymitch’s perspective. It need not be a whole trilogy; one book or even a duology would do it! But all those people in the area with Katniss in Catching Fire were not just people he knew, but his friends, his fellow rebels who had already suffered together once. What must it have been like for him to have to watch from a distance? What was it like to reunite with them, and how did they convince him to resist once again? How did he manage to pull all the strings that unraveled the Capitol for good? THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW!