This month, the Tots100 Book Club invited ten bloggers to share their favourite books with the world, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to share one of my new favourite novels with my blog readers.
You know you’ve found a new favourite book when you feel sad when you’re getting towards the end of the story. And then there’s that exciting moment of realising it’s part of a series – and you end up devouring all the books in a week.
That’s JUST how I felt about Twilight.
Just kidding.
But it is how I felt about The Hunger Games, another young adult fiction series, which tells the tale of a teenage girl Katniss, who is thrown into a government-sponsored gladiatorial competition called The Games, where she must fight other children to the death, until only one is left standing.
I loved The Hunger Games because it has some smart observations about reality TV, fashion and beauty. It's inescapably violent and chilling, a cocktail of Lord of the Flies, the Handmaid's Tale, Running Man and Big Brother.
The Hunger Games trilogy is, on one level, a love story, but this is no sparkly story of sappy adoration, and it's certainly not sexy, or titillating. Instead, Katniss is fiercely independent and about as far from ‘needy’ as it’s possible to get.
And she kicks ass- literally and in gruesome detail. Rather than relying on ‘traditional female strengths’ to survive, Katniss physically overpowers, outmanoeuvres and destroys her opponents – there’s a fair bit of violence in the books, but it never feels gratuitous.
The Tots100 Book Club is about sharing stories, and so we’ll be sending a copy of all the recommended books to other bloggers, who will in turn share their own favourite books with the community. I’d like to recommend The Hunger Games to Merry at Patch of Puddles because I hope she’ll enjoy it – and so will her girls!
