"I think there's a natural goodness built in to human beings. You know when you've stepped across the line into evil, and it's your life's challenge to try and stay on the right side of that line."

We made it. We did not know if we needed to know about Snow and what made him the most-hated man in dystopian YA fiction, but here we are.

I will say that, for the most part, I enjoyed this book. I tore through 500+ pages in just a day and a half. So if I did not enjoy it enough, I surely would not have been flippin' these pages as fast as I was. But I can't say that I am over the moon about it. Readers and fans who are expecting a novel like the previous Hunger Games books will definitely be disappointed. This book is split into 3 parts and you can loosely see them as: right before the 10th Hunger Games, during the 10th Hunger Games, and right after the 10th Hunger Games. And these Hunger Games are kind of messy: the cameras are not great quality and the contestants are not seen a lot, the "field/arena" is a little messy and blood stained, mentors are new this year for the tributes, spectators can't send in support/gifts really yet, etc. So it definitely goes to show that there is a LOT of improvement from this year's Hunger Games until the one we see where Katniss first emerges as the victor.

I do not think we got a story about Snow that I was expecting. I expected more than just a character study. I wanted to know what made him become evil or what triggered him to make the choices that landed him the evil president that he becomes. But from the first page he is set on being the president and he is just sort of whiny and narcissistic the whole time. He makes selfish decisions and nothing really seems out of character for who we know Snow to be. He just has always been a bad person it seems.

I absolutely LOVED Lucy Gray, though. And I am interested in seeing if Suzanne Collins will add another Hunger Games book that focuses on what happens/happened to her (if anything) once this book is over. Or will we see more of Snow's ascent into power? I could not help but noticed some connections with Lucy Gray and what might make Snow have such animosity towards Katniss so much in the future. A lot of things clicked. But so many things still did not. But that's okay.

Collins definitely did not disappoint the reader in the horror of the Hunger Games. Innocent kids are still butchering innocent kids and we are just as shocked now as we were reading the original trilogy. I am going to land on a 3.5 star review for this. I have been thinking about it a lot and this is just where my mind is at right now for it. I wanted a lot more, but I am also not mad at what I did get. Definitely recommend this to Hunger Games fans, but I just want expectations to be tapered a little bit because it is definitely a different type of story.