Review: Sunrise on the Reaping

3/5 stars

Sunrise on the Reaping, by Suzanne Collins (2025)

This iteration of the Hunger Games takes us back in time to the Second Quarter Quell - i.e., the 50th Hunger Games, which is the year that Haymitch Abernathy won. That year, the number of "contestants" was doubles, with two boys and two girls being selected from each district. I really liked getting Haymitch's backstory - maybe more so than I did Coreolanis Snow's in the other prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. With Ballad, I thought it was really well done, right up until the end, when Snow's transformation from someone battling his internal good and evil sides takes such a quick turn towards the bad. For me, that turn was not consistent with the way he was portrayed in the rest of the book.

In Sunrise, I absolutely believed every bit of back story to do with Haymitch. You can see his sweet, caring nature as a young boy slowly turn into sadness and cynicism as the book progresses. We see how and why he turned to alcohol to block out the world - for the most heart breaking reasons imaginable. We see how the Capitol broke him... we don't just see it, actually. We FEEL it. But, having read the trilogy, we know that he eventually makes his way back to some of that childhood optimism and warm-heartedness.

I enjoyed the new cast of characters, including Haymitch's mother and brother Sid, girlfriend Lenore Dove, fellow District 12 tributes, Maysilee, Louella, and Wyatt, and some of the other District's tributes - both enemies and those he forms an alliance with. We also see younger version of some of the Capitol citizens - Snow, Plutarch Heavensbee, and Effie Trinket - and their relationships with young Haymitch.

And, as a fun bonus, some of the previous Hunger Games winners make an appearance - some that we originally meet with Katniss in the 75th Hunger Games (where tributes were all reaped from previous winners). We see younger, less damaged versions of these beloved characters here.

As with Snow in Ballad, we know where things are headed for Haymitch - and for all the other tributes, since we know Haymitch won - but that doesn't make it any less gripping or stressful (in a good way)!

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UP NEXT: Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man), by Jesse Sutanto