General Summary
Lucy Gray lives in District 12 and gets selected to attend the 10th annual Hunger Games. This year, they are also doing a mentorship program where students from the capitol mentor the contestants.
Coriolanus Snow mentors Lucy Gray and tries to help her win the games. This is for his benefit as well as hers, she lives on her life and he gets a scholarship to university. The money is important to Coriolanus because after the war, his family does not have much money.
This book follows the games and their relationship.
My thoughts
It was extremely entertaining to read about Coriolanus and his thoughts as a child. In the book, he says that children are viewed as pure and the games are to show what even the best of them can do.
He believes that the districts deserve what they have to go through because of what they did to his family and how they sort of signed themselves up for it. He and his remaining family have extreme family pride and do not even share about their current state with anyone. I am genuinely not sure how I feel about this book.
Even though it was very interesting to read about President Snow’s childhood, I am not sure the ending was worth it. I also felt that the Hunger Games aspect of this book was very minimal, at least compared to the trilogy.
I would recommend this book to you if you want to read about after war Panem and more of a deep dive on Snow’s thoughts. Also, the little connections this book had with the original trilogy was so fun, almost like some Easter eggs.
Spoiler Review
More about the ending, it just felt so out of character for Lucy Gray to try to kill him, if that was what she was even trying to do.
To me, it just felt like a way to get her out of Snow’s life and yeah, it worked but was it the best way?
For some time, I genuinely thought that she was going to die in the games and that was going to be Coriolanus’ turning point to be able to do what he does in the future books.
The things that happened with Billy Taupe, Spruce and even Sejanus showed incredibly how much he cares about what other people think about him. It stuck out to me when he was talking about how the second kill was easier than the first.
Sometimes, it felt to me that he wasn’t as much guilty about taking a persons’ life, but more so disappointed in himself because he got caught.
For me, trying to figure out Snow’s character made it worth the read.
