The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

A prequel to the popular Hunger Game trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakestells the story of Coriolanus Snow as a young man and his rise to power in Panem. Born into a wealthy family, Snow’s family suffered and lost their wealth during the rebel war, but he is determined to get a scholarship and a good education to secure a promising future for himself. During the reaping, he is assigned Lucy Gray Baird from District Twelve (Katniss’ district), the “joke district” with the weakest tributes. Snow will stop at nothing to ensure that Lucy is the winner of the tenth Hunger Games. While I loved the Hunger Games series and devoured the books, I really struggled with this book. It is told from the third-person point of view which is a shift from the Hunger Games trilogy. This story is way too long with over five hundred pages, and I thought the same story could be told in a much shorter fashion. I still recommend this book to Hunger Games fans because it was nice to see what was the catalyst that turned Snow into who he is.