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"|| 3.5 stars ||

This was not as emotional as I would have liked, but it certainly never failed at being depressing.

I think, in a way, I never managed to get overly attached to any of the characters, since we know from the get-go that they will all die. Every single one of them. After all, we know that Haymitch not only won his Hunger Games with no other survivors in sight, but we also know that he has no family and no lover in the future. Ergo, we know they will all die; the tributes, his family, his lover, everyone.
Is that still depressing as all hell? Yes, obviously. Did it hit me really hard on an emotional level, though? Unfortunately, no… I guess I just really do think there needs to be a certain element of surprise in someone’s death for me to be able to connect to them beforehand; when I know someone is about to die, I take that into account from the very beginning, and so, although I will still see their story as tragic and (there I go with that word again) depressing, it’s not very emotionally charged for me since I never formed a bond with them that was based on an assumption of survival.

It also didn’t help that I found Haymitch slightly stand-offish and that I never really felt his despair or tragedy over any of the other tritbutes. He cared, sure, but not enough. Someone died, and then he’d be over it in a minute. Nobody’s death held weight for him, and therefore, not for me either.
And, as a consequence, all the ‘relationships’ he built during the book rang a little hollow as well. I really thought some people’s deaths would destroy him, or at least really do something to him emotionally, but that never happened with anyone in the arena; people I thought had become really important to him were apparently not so important after all.
Maysilee, especially, deserved better, in my opinion. I’d argue she was by far the most interesting, admirable, and well-developed character in this book, but still, her death did not really do anything to Haymitch (and therefore, in extension, not to me either). Even though he claimed she had become his sister in the arena, he still seemed to forget about her after only a couple of seconds…

Honestly, Haymitch was mostly just preoccupied with his little rebel plot, which, since I also knew already that that would fail based on future events, didn’t interest me very much.
I would even go as far as to say I found it slightly annoying, since most of Haymitch’s actions just seemed foolish to me. I’d say his dumbassery already started from the very first moment when he got reaped; him, but especially Lenore Dove, really pulled the dumbest, most useless move ever and I honestly struggled to even comprehend why on earth they did what they did, and how they saw this ending up in any other way than tragedy. Like, genuinely, why did they do that?
And you’d think Haymitch would have learned from that, right? You’d think he realised that rebelling in such an open, yet unprepared, manner will lead to death, but noo. Even when Beetee explains to him that the Capitol are currently killing his son to punish him for his rebellion, Haymitch still doesn’t stop to think: “oh hey, maybe it’s not smart for me to openly rebel against the Capitol since that will likely get everyone I love killed, especially since my little unprepared moments of rebellion are likely to serve no purpose whatsoever anyway”.
Right. Okay. I’m sorry, but I thought Haymitch was smarter than that. Like, rebellion is great, truly, but not in this way. This was doomed to fail from the start without any real goal in sight: I mean, really, even if he had succeeded, what would his plan have even accomplished?
Of course, I understand he’s still a kid and all, I know, but I still expected better from him, I guess. It just all seemed foolish, reckless, and useless to me, which took the power out of the story quite a bit.

Still, you’ll never hear me deny the strength and punch these Hunger Games stories have at its core, and I still managed to be completely sucked in. Do I sometimes wish these stories were written with more emotional depth? Sure. But the backbones of the plot and the suffocating world that is created here will never fail to inspire horror in me, which means every single version I read of it always manages to make me feel enough based on the contents alone. Still, the way the characters, their relationships, and their deaths are written does not always bring it home for me on a deeply emotional level.

'The Hunger Games' series:
00. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - 4.5 stars
0.5. Sunrise on the Reaping - 3.5 stars
01. The Hunger Games - 4.5 stars"