Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Release Date: September 1st 2009

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Add it: Goodreads

Overall:  ♥♥♥♥♥

So I just feel like doing an evil laugh right now because in my previous WordPress post, I couldn't post for a few weeks as “you are not to modify your web presence in anyway from the time it is submitted until after it has been marked” and I said that sucks, because I like writing reviews and I like blogging. AND NOW I CAN :D Ehh ehhe! Sooo I've read Mockingjay and that's up for review after Monday - I have a Marketing exam. Woo!

In a sad attempt to make you laugh I’ll tell you about how the other day Jordon asked me what 2 divided by 3 was because he was mocking me about something.. in response I got really confused and asked him “wow, is that actually possible?” (with a serious expression on my face) and then he just laughed at me even more than before, but it was pretty funny :D … So yeah that really wasn't that interesting, but I wanted to share anyway and tell you that it was probably the blondest moment of my blonde moments for the week and another reason why I’m studying journalism rather than something to do with math. Ugh!

Moving along to the reason you’re actually reading this blog for…. The review :O!!
In some reviews I’ve read on Goodreads, alot of people seem unhappy with the second installment of the Hunger Games trilogy but I found Catching Fire just as fast paced and as exciting as the first installment.

Catching Fire begins a few months after Katniss and Peeta have won the 74th Hunger Games but the winners have no sense of triumph. They have become leader figures for a rebellion of the districts against the capitol. The
manipulative and insane, arsehole
, idiotic, President Snow has decided to pay our beloved Katniss a visit to her new home in the Victor’s Village and tells her that the berry suicide attempt that Katniss simply did through an act of love, was in fact openly defying the capitol and an attempt to start a rebellion.

Whilst I definitely found the first book in the series heart wrenching and emotional, I found myself crying in the first 100 pages of this book. I found myself wishing that Katniss was never in this situation, that she lived in a country that had rights and a country that wasn’t forced to kill eachother off in ‘games’ every year and I found myself wishing that President Snow would run into a force field so his heart stopped beating and then have Katniss shoot an arrow at each of his limbs while he died. Yes, I hated him THAT much within the first 100 pages (and just as much for the remainder of the book). I don’t want to give away any spoilers but as I read about that poor old man who paid his respects and all of District 11, I literally had to put the book down and calm myself down. This book made me do this several times, I was overwhelmed with so much emotion for alot of the book and I found myself rereading sentences and paragraphs, not because I didn’t understand it or because the sentence structure was dodgy, but because I wanted to and because I needed to get it through my head that I was reading a book, not living in Katniss’ world with her.

Ms Collins has written another brilliant story and has sucked me back in as she sucked me into the first installment. I especially loved how she described the arena, how many twists and turns this installment had and that we get to find out more information about the oh so mysterious District 13 (which, thank god, otherwise it’ would’ve just been some really interesting but useless plot device from the first book which doesn’t get expanded on, like Sino-AIDS in the Sookie Stackhouse series. Ugh). I thought it was amazing. In addition, I loved the ending, I was so scared and it honestly made my jaw drop. Okay, so there was a cliffhanger, but in the way of cliffhangers, this one was a good cliffhanger. But maybe I’m just saying that because I’ve got Mockingjay sitting patiently on my kitchen bench begging “READ MEEEE” :) . The only thing I can think of which I didn’t like about this was that it seemed a few months went by in a few pages, but this was only a minor issue and didn’t bother me too much, I still thoroughly enjoyed this.