The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins
The Hunger Games
This book was a huge hit when I was in high school. Everyone and their dog had read it and the movie made it even bigger. Add some huge Hollywood stars in the cast that actually gave great performances, and this series was made historical!
I am a huge fan of the Hunger Games movies and have enjoyed watching the series many times over. I knew them backwards and forwards and wanted to see how much I was missing, having never read the books.
My first impression of the Hunger Games was that it was the closest book-to-movie adaptation I had ever seen. They really didn't miss too many details. The details they did miss, however, were quite easy to forget and did not take away from the themes or the stories.
At first, my mind could not separate the characters in the book from the actors on the screen. Sometimes, that means that they made good casting choices. However, Katniss gradually faded to a character that wasn't Jennifer Lawrence. As deperately as I wanted to get Josh Hutcherson out of my head as Peta, I couldn't. It was quite frustrating but Peta is a great character if he's not played by Josh Hutcherson.
Overall, the book is great! Great idea/concept. Pretty violent, but as the story progresses, the violence is somewhat justified so that didn't bother me at all. The romance was a little unbelievable to me, but tolerable.
In my opinion, if you've seen the movie, you don't have to read the book. Though both are very fun!
I won't dive in to each book separately, because my thoughts are pretty much the same. However, I do have a very different opinion of "The Balland of Songbirds and Snakes".
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
This book started quite interestingly. It had the allure of something like Wicked: showing how a terrible, terrible villain became a terrible, terrible villain.
It was not at all like Wicked in that it sucked. I really thought this book was so so disappointed. The show, produced by Amazon, was just as bad, but in different ways. I thought the characters were gimmicky and it had maybe the worst ending I've ever seen/read. It just stops and avails no explanation as to how President Snow became President Snow other than "he was pretty bad".
One thumb down and one thumb to the side.