The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (A Hunger Games Novel)

I'm a huge fan of the hunger games trilogy, (specially catching fire which is one of my favorite books ever) so I was skeptical about reading this one bc I'm not really into villain origin stories, (specially one who we know never changed or redeemed himself at all and we already know its ending) And I'm definitely not into male lead character stories. So after finishing it, I must say that I'm very disappointed in this book. It's not a BAD book, but I really don't understand why was it necessary to tell the story of a character who we knew almost nothing about in the first place (bc it wasn't even explored in depth in the previous books) and this story starts with him already being a horrible person. It's unnecessarily long, very slow at times and entire chapters are wasted in boring details that are very irrelevant to the story (bc we know the ending) while other MAJOR plot twists that deserved way more time, are told in a very rushed way in literally 1 line. I don't recommend it.

A great book that explicates how President Snow rise to power and why he act the way he is in the original trilogy. I love the way Suzanne portrays that both nature and nurture are at play of how we grow as a person. Sure, the environment you grew up affects heavily upon your personality, but your own thoughts and how you see and treat other are also important. People who grew up in bad environments can be good and people grew up in good environment can be bad. This book illustrates this aspect so well through many characters: Snow, Lucy Gray, Sejanus, Dr. Gaul, and Tigris.

as a long time THG fan, I think this is the best out off all the books (except MAYBE catching fire.) it enhances the entire series. very well written characters! I will say, it feels like when it mentions Lucy Gray's sister has been seeing "Some gal down the road" it was very unnecessary. I do not, and never have hated homosexual people, but I don't think it is fair to the readers to add some random piece of info that literally doesn't matter to the story in there. otherwise FIVE STARS FOREVER!♡