Sunrise on the Reaping
The Hunger Games — Book 5 / Prequel 2
What Is It About?
Sunrise on the Reaping takes us back to Panem twenty-four years before Katniss Everdeen ever volunteered — to the 50th Hunger Games, the second Quarter Quell, where each district must provide twice as many tributes. The protagonist is Haymitch Abernathy, a sixteen-year-old boy from District 12 who is illegally drafted as a tribute. What follows is Haymitch’s journey through the most brutal arena in the Games’ history, alongside a cast of tributes whose fates are, almost without exception, heartbreaking.
Collins won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Book of 2025 with this novel — and that recognition is entirely deserved. This is not fan service. It is a fully realised, emotionally devastating story that illuminates exactly how the man we know from the original trilogy became who he is — the drinking, the cynicism, the specific broken quality of his hope. It contextualises everything, and it does so with Collins’s characteristic unflinching intelligence about power, propaganda, and what it costs to survive.
What I Loved
My Honest Thoughts
The fan service callbacks are occasionally heavy-handed. References to characters from the original trilogy and Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes appear regularly, and some feel organic while others feel like box-ticking. Readers who are deep in the Hunger Games universe will enjoy the connections; newcomers may find them distracting.
You already know Haymitch wins. Unlike the original trilogy, there is no uncertainty about the central question of survival. The tension therefore has to come from elsewhere — from the cost of his survival, the people he loses, the things the Capitol does to him afterward. Collins understands this and redirects your dread accordingly, but some readers will find the stakes feel lower as a result.
The ending is among the most brutal she has ever written. I cannot say more without spoiling, but Haymitch’s victory is not a victory in any sense that matters. The final chapters made me sit very still for quite a long time. That is exactly what a Hunger Games book should do.
“The moment our hearts shattered? It belongs to us.”
— Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins
Who Should Read It?
- Haymitch’s full origin story, finally told
- Dystopian fiction with real political weight
- A love story that costs everything
- Collins’s sharpest, most urgent writing
- Books that transport you back to Panem
- Haven’t read the original trilogy yet
- Need a hopeful, uplifting ending
- Are sensitive to violence against young people
- Found Ballad of Songbirds deeply disappointing
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Final Ratings
“Sunrise on the Reaping is the prequel Hunger Games fans have been waiting for since 2010. It is brutal, important, and written with Collins’s full creative power. Read the original trilogy first — then read this, and understand Haymitch Abernathy completely.”
— Bookish Duke
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