Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Jacket Blurb:  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 her 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.

To say that this audiobook annoyed me would be like asking if a small, vocal child in a restaurant annoys me.   Which would be a firm yes!

I think it's mostly the narrator that's grating on my nerves, the inflection, intonation and delivery are too much.  An over enunciation of the words compounded by an attempt to do some kind of accent just don't work for the characters.  I've said it before and I can say it again - a narrator can make or break a book.

Catching Fire picks up right after Catniss and Peeta return home from the Hunger Games, and are about to embark upon a Grand Celebration tour.  President Snow arrives to deliver a threat to Catniss, that she has to convince him that she truly loves Peeta and not Gale.   Ah...teen romantic agnst.  Joy.

The Grand Celebration tour comes and goes. The Districts are unsettled.  The Capital is unsettled.  Catniss is unsettled.   And then the bombshell that all the past victors must return to the Arena for the Quarter-Quell Hunger Games to "remind" the Districts who is really in charge of their lives.  Catniss wants to do her own thing in the Arena.  Peeta and Hamich have other plans. Catniss is convinced she needs to keep Peeta alive, even after being told that he doesn't want to live without her.  Peeta has other plans.  

By the end of the book I was ready for someone to hold Catniss under water and put us all out of our misery.

This edition was full of all sorts of "shocking" things that, really, weren't that shocking given the direction the plot is going with a third book in the wings.  A couple instances those "shocking" revelations came across more trite than anything.  I became very tired of the internal angsty monolog, our Heroine seemed more needy this book, and her indecision on who she should love is over done. 

Recommended with reservations and if you've read Hunger Games.



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