Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay is the third and final installment in The Hunger Games series. I inhaled the first two, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, over the summer, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one!

Because it's the last in a trilogy, I hate to go into much detail here...I don't want to spoil the first two for those who haven't read them (If you haven't, you should!) But I will say, I loved this one as much as the other two...right up until the last couple of chapters.

At the very end, Katniss, the protagonist slips into a drug induced haze...we experience the very end of the novel through a cloud of morphling: "Foam. I really am floating on foam. I can feel it beneath the tips of my fingers, cradling parts of my naked body. There's much pain but there's also something like reality. The sandpaper of my throat. The smell of burn medicine from the first arena. The sound of my mother's voice. These things frighten me, and I try to return to the deep to make sense of them." This felt like a cop out to me. It felt like Collins got to the end of a brilliant series and didn't quite know how to finish it...so she was vague and poetic and nebulous.

In the last 30 pages, the book takes a final twist, which I hadn't anticipated...and I'm not sure I liked. It left me feeling unsatisfied. I wasn't counting on everything working out perfectly, but I was expecting, after all Katniss had endured, something closer to happily ever after...a real, indisputable victory.

I've read other readers' reviews, and reactions to the ending seem to be strong and pretty evenly split. Some people were disappointed like me; others loved it.

Either way, there's something to be said for books that cause such a stir...that make you angry...that make you think...that make you want your friends to read them just so you can hash them out together.

I'm still really glad I read this series. Now I just need you to read it, too!