Sunrise on the Reaping – Suzanne Collins
Somehow, five books into “The Hunger Games” series, Suzanne Collins has pulled off the impossible — “Sunrise on the Reaping” might just be her best yet. Propulsive, gutting and almost unbearably tense, it takes the familiar structure of the series and makes it feel more personal, more political and more devastating than ever.
This time, the focus is on Haymitch Abernathy, and from page one, it’s clear this is not a victory tour. Born on the Fourth of July — fittingly, Reaping Day — Haymitch is just trying to scrape together some kind of life in District 12: bootlegging, taking care of his little brother and loving a Covey girl named Lenore. Before the Reaping even begins, you feel the weight of everything he stands to lose.
Structurally, “Sunrise” will feel familiar. Like “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and “The Hunger Games” itself, it opens with the slow drumbeat of inevitability: the grim reaping, the tense training and the bloodbath of the opening minutes in the arena.
Yet this novel strikes a harder, sharper tone than its predecessors. There’s open hostility toward the Capitol’s escorts, and an exhaustion in the districts that feels visceral and hard-earned. The book leans fully into the psychological horror of living under the perpetual threat of an annual lottery of death where even survival guarantees nothing but lifelong punishment.
This time around, Collins leans hard into political parallels. You can feel the shades of MAGA nationalism, January 6 and the rewriting of facts for propaganda — and it makes Panem’s cruelty land with even more weight. Watching the Capitol edit the Quarter Quell into a feel-good lie is one of the most chilling parts of the novel, because it doesn’t feel like dystopia anymore.
Haymitch, as a character, feels richer and sadder than I expected. He’s not just a survivor; he’s a loyal romantic, someone who carries love with him even as the Games strip everything away. Knowing what becomes of him — the broken mentor we meet decades later — only sharpens the emotional gut punches. His survival feels less like triumph and more like a terrible version of Sisyphus: winning once, only to be forced to mentor children to their deaths for the rest of his life.
There’s a lot to admire here. Collins finally lets the story fully embrace the darkness that was always lurking under the surface of these books. She also excels at fleshing out the major and minor characters. In fact, I probably connected with more characters in this novel than I have in any previous entry in the series.
Even the recurring characters — this time Mags, Wiress and Beetee — are given new layers. Knowing how their stories end in “Catching Fire” makes their presence here all the more heartbreaking.
There are clever new touches throughout too: a minor gay character whose presence subtly acknowledges Haymitch’s broad decency, a creative approach to alliances in the arena and a cast of Capitol villains who, for once, feel less cartoonish and more chillingly banal. In particular, Drusilla is a wicked, scene-stealing invention — one I can easily imagine brought to life with a biting, comedic turn (my dream casting is Demi Moore).
Crucially, Collins refuses to sanitize the material. If the original trilogy sometimes hesitated to fully confront the grim realities it invoked — often leaning more into romance and teen angst — “Sunrise” does not blink. The violence here is brutal, the consequences lasting and the propaganda machinery that follows is disturbingly believable.
Jefferson White’s audiobook narration also deserves special mention: he captures Haymitch’s youth, rage, and grief with rare precision, a major improvement over the uneven narration that hampered “Ballad.”
That’s not to say it’s flawless. Some of the world-building gets heavy enough to feel disorienting, but honestly, that worked for me. The tributes are confused and scrambling too. It just pulls you deeper into the chaos.
The final chapters are relentless. Watching Haymitch lose everything — not just once, but over and over — is brutal. And yet, Collins leaves a small but honest glimmer of hope at the end, with an epilogue that ties him to Katniss in a way that feels earned, not sentimental.
I don't give five stars easily and almost never to a series book, or a YA novel, but “Sunrise on the Reaping” earns it. If Collins decides to tell another story in this world — maybe following Mags or Wiress — I’ll be first in line.
Rating (story): 5/5 stars
Rating (narration): 5/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: April 24 – April 28, 2025
Multi-tasking: Okay. The familiar formula of the series makes it easy to follow, but this installment brings much greater emotional depth — and with such a large cast, it’s easy to lose track of who’s who if you’re not paying close attention.
