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Cover of Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Sunrise on the Reaping

  • 400 pages · about 7 hours
  • First published 2025
  • 12 editions

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1 About this book

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

  • Dystopian fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Science fiction
  • Romance
  • Science Fiction & Fantasy
  • Young Adult

2 What to expect

A Hunger Games prequel set twenty-four years before the first book, telling how Haymitch Abernathy, later Katniss's mentor, was sent into the fiftieth Games at sixteen. It returns to the arena and to the Capitol's use of spectacle and propaganda, with familiar characters as their younger selves. It is fast and brutal, and bleaker than the original trilogy, since anyone who knows the series knows roughly where his story leads.

Good for readers who want: more of the Hunger Games world, a survival contest, and a dark, fast read.

3 About Suzanne Collins

Born 1962

Suzanne Collins (born August 10, 1962) is an American author and television writer who is best known as the author of the young adult dystopian fiction book series The Hunger Games. She is also the author of the children's fantasy series The Underland Chronicles.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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