Bittersweet but fitting. This series was exceptional, and I couldn't put it down. I was legit sad when I was nearing the end because there were no more pages.

Ending thoughts spoilers galore
I can't believe my Gale and Haymitch got to survive! Katniss couldn't ever see Gale the same way after his inadvertent bomb took Prim's life. too much to overcome. the whole reason she was in the games was because of her sister. but they all have blood on their hands; I still liked her with Gale, but he was very much on sadboy hours here. Like, it's not the time for all of that sir. But I also adored the sweet sensitivity of Peeta. Peeta truly cared about Katniss to the bitter end.

This book gets war so beautifully well. honest to God, there are no victors. And no one gets out unscathed. Katniss isn't some Wonder Woman hero in the end. she's just a young girl trying to recover. she has PTSD and a drug addiction. and then the fact they wanted to have a version of Hunger Games with the capitol's kids ... whoo! ( )

A pretty satisfying conclusion to the series. There was probably a little too much crammed in, particularly in the last couple of chapters, but I think it's good that it wasn't drawn out to another volume.

I thought it was going to fall into the Return of the Jedi trap of having everything done by the few characters that we knew, but it actually avoided that fairly well. While Katniss is something of a figurehead, she was somewhat incidental to a lot of the most significant events of the book.

I was a little surprised at how dark it was - Collins definitely doesn't shy away from the psychological trauma and long-term damage that her characters suffer.

I think this series is pretty ambitios for teen fiction and for the most part the message was pretty strong so I gave it an extra star. I did start to get tired of the constant one step forward two steps back at the end of every chapter and I think a lot of the action could have been saved for the final battle instead of interspersed the way it was. I think the first book would have stood firm on its own and the sequels kind of took away some of its glory. But to be fair, I couldn't put any of them down and this one had me going pretty much non-stop until the last page so I can't really give it a bad review... definetly a series worth reading. ( )

TikTok made me buy it! The third book in the international No.1 bestselling series (Hunger Games Trilogy 3)

8.5/10 ( )