Book Review: The Hunger Games

THE HUNGER GAMES: This book is overrated

The Hunger Games is one of the most overrated YA books among all overrated YA books in contemporary fiction. I’m sorry, but this is just another Twilight -- the kind of book that your friends desperately ask you to read but turns out to be crap. The book has some interesting ideas, but it fails to grab my attention because the prose is very bland; the descriptions are very cinematic and flat; and the overuse of short, snappy sentences and fragments makes the flow of words very rough.

Even if I put the style aside, the book is still not impressive. The fictional world follows a small amount of rules, and, as a result, there is plenty of room for deus ex machina. The author weaves in too many coincidences in the story that they feel like a dull solution to conflicts. To top it all off, certain plot points that should have happened are excluded. It is as if the author is afraid that she wouldn’t be able to pull them off. So she cops out. And I feel cheated.

So, why is The Hunger Games so popular even though it has a weak plot and a flat prose? What is it about poor writing that captivates readers? It is convenience. The Hunger Games is so easy to read. The sentences are, at best, middle grade. To tell the truth, even middle graders can write better than this! The author utilizes this mindless writing style to tell a ‘suspenseful’ story, and poof! She has a bestseller. It just shows that society prefers books that are very cinematic, easy to understand, and do not require deep thought, or, at the least, a long attention span. We want everything to be straight to the point so much that, sometimes, we are willing to sacrifice depth.

People should stop saying that The Hunger Games is a masterpiece. It’s far from that. It’s just a stupid book that pretends to be a social commentary, when, in fact, it’s nothing but a typical YA novel -- poorly written, shallow, and full of teen angst.