First read: some point in early 2012. 3 stars.

Second read: April 23rd, 2020. 4 stars

Read for O.W.L.s Magical Readathon - Care of Magical Creatures: read a book that has a creature with a beak on the cover (see my O.W.L.s TBR video here)

I'm pleasantly surprised, and also very relieved. I first read The Hunger Games when I was 15 years old. I devoured it then, and I remembered liking it quite a lot. I was genuinely surprised when I looked at my rating today to see that I had only given it 3 stars, because I hold this series up so highly in my mind. I apparently liked it more the second time around, which is what I'm so relieved about. I was nervous to re-read this because I thought my tastes would have changed too much, and re-reading would ruin this series that I hold so dearly in my heart. But instead it did the opposite; I remember why this story has stayed with me so well for nearly a decade, and reading it again brought me right back to sitting in my 10th grade science class, sneaking in paragraphs under my desk whenever the teacher wasn't looking. It brought me back to the days (years, really) where I would sit and binge read and entire series in one weekend with plenty of time left over for homework. I read this in one sitting (aside from a few snack breaks) and enjoyed every second of it. I cried at the all the same parts I did the first time around, laughed at the same parts, and even though I know this story very well it still somehow felt fresh. While I do recognize that the writing is my no means extraordinary, there's something so compulsively readable about this book that even now I still loved it.

I think one reason why I actually enjoyed this more as an adult is that I have a better understanding of politics now. I knew literally nothing about how politics worked when I was a teenager. I don't think I even knew who the prime minister of my country was until I became old enough to vote, and I didn't understand what a dictatorship meant until I met someone in university who lived through one. I didn't even know what poor leadership looked like, with how little I paid attention to how my own country was run, let alone the one below me. But now as an adult, with a passion for politics and social justice that I didn't have all those years ago, I understand this story a hell of a lot better. I can understand their anger, their need for rebellion, the fear they face every day. Living in Canada I definitely don't experience those things first hand, but I have seen it in the real world now, and I know what it means. So while I was a little scared that reading this from the lens of someone who had grown up would ruin this series for me, it actually gave me an even deeper appreciation for them and I found it to be a lot more valuable than I did then. The first time I saw this story the same way the people of the Capitol did, as a love story. But now I understand the people of the districts, and I'm actually really looking forward to re-reading the other books before Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes comes out, if only to see how much of this story I missed when I was really only in it for the romance