Unapologetic Reviews

If you haven’t read the original The Hunger Games trilogy, stop here and go read it. You should read it anyway, but you absolutely should not start with this book. There are spoilers in this review for the original trilogy. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins begins with a burden of knowledge. We already know how this ends. Haymitch Abernathy is reaped. He wins. Everyone he loves is killed in retaliation. The Games continue unchanged, and for the next twenty-five years he mentors children he knows will die, until Katniss and Peeta arrive. That is not a spoiler. That is the emotional framework you walk in with. So the question is not what happens, but why. Why Haymitch? Why this particular victory warranted such cruelty. What did he do that terrified the Capitol enough to break him so thoroughly, yet still fail to stop what was coming. This book is about prevailing when the odds are not merely against you, but mathematically impossible. It is about failing and still trying ...

I read Cards on the Table (1936) as part of my 2025 Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. The premise is wonderfully bold. Four detectives and four suspected murderers are invited to a dinner party by the eccentric Mr Shaitana . By the end of the night, the host is dead, and the real game begins. Christie herself once said this was one of her favourites, and it is easy to see why. The setup is unusual, even daring, because the mystery relies far less on physical clues and far more on psychology. Poirot is here, but he is not working alone. He is joined by Superintendent Battle , Colonel Race , and the sharp-witted Ariadne Oliver . Each approaches the suspects differently, and Christie uses those differences to explore four distinct ways of thinking about guilt. The suspects themselves are a study in possibility. Each has a dark shadow in their past, and each is capable of murder. At times, it truly feels as though it could have been anyone. That may be why I never remember the solution....