"Let the Hunger Games begin." A book focusing on Katniss Everdeen of District 12 of Panem which is built in the ruins of futuristic North America. Each year for the last seventy four years the Hunger games are held, each district of Panem (12 districts ) sends in two tributes to participate in the hunger games (one boy and one girl determined by a lottery) for a fight to the death in an arena which consists of mountain ranges, forests, lakes and a golden horn containing supplies for the games. Katniss Everdeen volunteers for the games as the original lottery picked her younger sister, Primrose as a tribute, Katniss could not watch her sister die, thus she volunteers for the games along with the baker's son, Peeta. They are then whisked off to the Capitol by their coach Hymitch and assistant Effie. On reaching the Capitol Katniss meets her designer Cinna and his team of stylists. Haymitch creates a strategy that Katniss and Peeta have to use in the arena and around to impress people and get extra sponsorship, they have to act as if they are star-crossed lovers who cannot bear to kill each other. After weeks of hard training Katniss and Peeta are ready to fight. In the Arena, it's a necessity to stay alive, but Katniss can't bring herself to kill tributes; she is not a murderer, is she? At the end, it's a fight to the finish with suprises, new alliances, and deaths. Can the star-crossed lovers stay alive by defying the Capitol?
This book is not only good, it's very captivating. It literally sucks you inside and you can't see or hear anything other than the events happening on that page. The book is not like you have a boring start and then at the end it becomes exciting; it's interesting from the begining. There is one flaw though: the actual games start around the tenth chapter and before that is just a kind of prologue. Another thing is that I think it's for kids of age 12-13 and above because there is a lot of violence and lots of romance at the end of the book. But the romance does not dull things; there is a balance of action and love in this book, a very well-managed balance.
