Sunrise on the Reaping (A Hunger Games Novel) by Suzanne Collins

 

When you've been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honour of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town.

As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

Book Review

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Sunrise on the Reaping feels like returning to Panem with older eyes, and Suzanne Collins knows exactly what she’s doing. Even though it’s a prequel, the book doesn’t read like an add-on or a nostalgia trip—it feels essential, like it’s been quietly waiting in the shadows of the original trilogy this whole time.

Set decades before The Hunger Games, the story dives into the 50th Games—the infamous Second Quarter Quell—but what makes the book so gripping isn’t just the spectacle or the lore. Collins uses this era of Panem to peel back another layer of how the Capitol tightens its grip, how fear becomes tradition, and how violence becomes culture. It’s familiar territory, but the perspective is new enough that nothing feels repetitive.

One of Collins’ biggest strengths is her ability to write characters who feel real within incredibly harsh circumstances. The protagonist here is not a Katniss duplicate, nor a Snow-style antihero experiment—this is someone with their own voice, motivations, blind spots, and emotional landscape. You watch them interpret the world differently from any character we’ve followed before, and that alone makes the book worth reading.

There’s also that signature Collins rhythm: clear, lean prose; a sense of dread that builds slowly; and moments of emotional clarity that hit harder than you expect. She never glamorizes the Games, but she always shows how the Capitol tries to. That contrast—blade-sharp, uncomfortable, brilliant—is part of what made the original series stand out, and it’s back in full form.

The worldbuilding is especially interesting here. Because it’s set earlier in Panem’s history, you get to see the Capitol still defining how it wants the Games to look and function. It’s unsettling in that “oh no, this is how it begins” way. The book doesn’t rely on heavy exposition either—you learn through the characters, through the culture, through the cracks in the system that you recognize all too well.

Tonally, the book lands somewhere between The Hunger Games and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It’s more mature and reflective than the original trilogy at times, but not as cold or analytical as Songbirds. It sits in a sweet spot: emotional but not sentimental, brutal but not gratuitous.

If there's one thing worth noting, it’s that Collins isn’t here to give you a triumphant, feel-good story. She’s here to explore power—who has it, who loses it, and how it shapes a nation. And she does it with the same sharp political edge that made the series so iconic in the first place.

Overall, Sunrise on the Reaping is a strong, thoughtful return to Panem. It deepens the world, expands the series’ moral and political questions, and offers a character-driven story that stands solidly on its own. Whether you’re a longtime fan or dipping back into the series after years away, it has that unmistakable Suzanne Collins spark—quietly intense, emotionally grounded, and deeply unsettling in all the right ways.