Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol – a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she’s afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she’s not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol’s cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can’t prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before… and surprising readers at every turn.

I’m not quite sure what has taken me so long to finish this trilogy. It’s not because I didn’t like the Hunger Games, because I did. I told myself for a while that it was because Catching Fire hadn’t been released in paperback yet. If I’m honest, that isn’t all of it though. As much as I liked Hunger Games, it was a hard book to read. What Katniss and Peeta went through was cruel and terrifying. I think I might have been just prolonging the agony. When someone lent me the second book in the trilogy I couldn’t avoid it any longer.

Catching Fire takes up a little while after Hunger Games left off. Katniss is still coming to terms with everything that she has gone through. Everyone is safe and now she has to go through the motions of being the happy, madly in love ambassador with Peeta, whom she has barely talked to since they came back. Unsurprisingly, that feeling of safety is short lived and they are thrown back into the Capitol’s dangerous game. To say that the emotions in Catching Fire are raw would be an understatement.

There are so many twists and turns, along with the raw intense emotion you have no choice but to keep reading. Stopping wasn’t an option.

I know that some of my nearest and dearest absolutely hate love triangles, and I can understand why. I’m almost certain that some of that attitude comes from the teenage drama that some YA romances thrive on. The connection between Katniss, Gale and Peeta in Catching Fire couldn’t be farther away from that scenario. This trio is in an impossible situation and Katniss is stuck right in the middle of it. She’s not a flighty girl who doesn’t know what she wants. She simply wants everyone she loves to be safe and doesn’t have time to give into her feelings or open her heart up to either one of them. The pain that these characters experience is heartbreaking – there will be no winner in this and you know as you read it’s only going to get worse.

Turns out my initial reluctance to read Catching Fire was totally warranted. It was just as hard to read, if not more so, than Hunger Games, yet it was impossible to put down. Am I going to wait as long to read Mockingjay? I don’t think that’s possible. Even though I’ve heard from several people that they didn’t like the way that Suzanne Collins ended the trilogy, I need to finish it. I’ve heard just as many people say that it was amazing, so I’m willing to trust that Mockingjay is worth the inevitable heartbreak. After all, books that bring out emotions and reactions this intense are why we keep reading, right?