Michelle's Reviews > Mockingjay

i NEVER thought i'd ever rate this book below a 5...but here i am....and the only reason i gave it a three even is because the first two books of the hunger games were just SO GOOD they brought this one up...by three stars. honestly, i’ve waited so long for mockingjay to come out. i practically peed my pants on august 24th and now that i’ve finally finished the book (thanks to a full day of obsessive reading-meals not included) all i can feel is…annoyance. annoyance and disappointment. annoyance that katniss let herself be so easily used, didn't really care about anything, and was idle for so much of the book. and disappointment that you never really get any closure with gale, peeta wasn’t there for a third of the book, and he “wasn’t himself” for almost all of it. but mostly just mad that nothing really happened for large portions of the book. like…katniss seemed kinda…stuck all throughout. i’ve always loved her because she was a character that didn’t break down easily but mental breakdowns seemed like her favorite activity in this book. she spent like a fourth of the book missing peeta but she never actually DID anything about it. and then when he was saved she barely even talked to him let alone tried to help him. okay *spoiler alert* one of the only bright spots of this book is finding out about finnick’s past. i was definitely surprised by all he had to say. it made me like him even more. i can honestly say he was the only character that didn't annoy me once in mockingjay…AND THEN HE DIED. i am SO MAD that finnick and cinna’s death were pretty much considered inconsequential. like yeah, katniss was sad, but neither of them got like a dramatic tragical death. it was just “yeah. they died. it sucks.” and that really bummed me out cause i LOVED them both. i thought finnick's death was three times as devastating as prims, mostly because i feel like we never got to know prim well enough to really mourn her death. but for finnick i had to go back and reread the page several times before i could actually accept that he had died. and even then i hoped he would magically pop to life again. and not a single tear shed for him from katniss? NOT. OKAY. even though this was the book where the most characters died, it was also the book where i didn't cry once reading it. mostly because katniss didn't seem to really even care about anything which sort of killed my sympathy and sparked annoyance instead. and yeahh…so back to the whole non-closure thing with gale? it was just so…anticlimatic and…lacking. i’ve been a peeta supporter since the first chapter of the first book and even i hated how katniss and gale ended. i don’t know. i just think that maybe i was expecting this last book to follow basically the same format as the hunger games and catching fire, and i’m just ridiculously (like seriously to the point where it’s pathetic) disappointed that it took such a different turn. …and now that i know the entire series is over so that’s the only ending i’m gonna get....:'(
katniss’s shining moment appeared near the end though. when she decided to shoot coin instead of president snow. it almost brought back the old hunger-games-and-catching-fire-rational-and-strong katniss. almost. but then she had to go and try to get herself addicted to morphine in a suicide attempt. bleh. i always knew this was a somewhat dark series, but this book was just. so. bleak. reading it was pretty much equivalent to cutting my wrists. perhaps no amount of writing could ever have helped suzanne collins live up to my sky high expectations of this book but still….

the book could have been better. a lot. better.