Twelve in 12: January (part 2)

Disclaimer: I know that the "Twelve in 12" challenge only requires you to read one book per month but I finished my book with time to spare, so I thought I’d see if I could read another book before the month was up. Turns out I could, so I decided to do a "Part 2" to January’s "Twelve in 12" submission.

Title: Mockingjay
Author: Suzanne Collins
Pages: 390
Genre: Dystopian, Science Fiction, Young Adult

Mockingjay is the third installment in the Hunger Games trilogy and easily my favorite. Usually I’m not into "young adult" novels as I find them to be too immature for my tastes and I usually dislike the writing style which is often trite and stereotypical and while sometimes the Hunger Games books can drift into that territory, I found them a lot easier to swallow than, say… a certain vampire franchise I could mention. 

The book centers around Katniss Everdeen, the main character, heroine and our narrator/storyteller. She is the victor of two subsequent Hunger Games and is now the face of the rebellion against the Capitol (if this makes no sense to you, you may have to look up a brief synopsis of the first two books). We follow her through her trials and tribulations, rejoice and grieve with her and succumb to a pretty riveting adventure.

I quite liked this book, finding it much better than the second installment, Catching Fire, which, in my mind, was more of the same as the first installment. This book centers around a different issue than the first two and is a wholly different story line. There are new characters and a couple decent plot twists (although I saw the last "plot twist" a mile away). My only qualm with the book was the romantic subplot (one which runs throughout the entire trilogy). It kind of ruined the credibility for me a little bit. I half-imagined large crowds of tweens in malls with "Team Peeta" and "Team Gale" t-shirts. It was kind of distracting, to say the least. If there was to be a romantic subplot, I feel it could have been narrowed down to just one potential suitor instead of two.

All in all, I found the book to be an entertaining read for its genre. When you’re reading "young adult" fiction and you are, in fact, not a young adult, you take what you get. If you liked the Uglies series, these are for you. If you liked Twilight, you’ll probably still like it. I rate it 3.5 out of 5, would recommend to a friend with similar taste.