Book Five in the messed up Hunger Games world ties together the characters from all the other books including The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (President Snow’s tragic tale) and lays the foundation for the uprising.
It begins on the morning of the reaping for the 50th Annual Hunger Games (The Second Quarter Quell). Young Haymitch is happy and madly in love with Lenore Dove, a singer from the Covey. (This echoes Snow’s love for Lucy Gray.) To “celebrate” fifty years of murdering children, twice the amount will be reaped—four per district so forty-eight in all. We already know that young Haymitch Abernathy, not only was chosen, but won (if you can call it that) so this book shows us, in vivid detail, how that came about.
Haymitch is chosen by rebels Beetee and Plutarch Heavensbee to sabotage the games along with Beetee’s son, Ampere, who was also reaped. This, along with trying to keep his team alive, becomes his mission. Each connection he makes in the arena and each subsequent death breaks him a little more. His descent into alcoholic madness is justified. The only other thing he could have done, given the horrific circumstances, was die. Since the story’s written in first person present tense, it’s very in-your-face. Nothing is held back and our hearts break along with Haymitch’s heart. Mags and Wiress also make an appearance, along with the brilliant Effie Trinket.
Collins brilliantly alludes to Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 narrative poem, “The Raven,” where the narrator descends into madness after losing his beloved, Lenore. “Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.” Haymitch knows of the poem because his own beloved, Lenore Dove, used to recite it to him. In the end, Haymitch becomes the mad narrator. You’ll have to read the story to understand why, and I guarantee if you don’t hate Snow now, you will forevermore.
The movie premieres this November 2026 in Canada, and I can’t wait to see this tragic love story hit the big screen.
As I read Hazelthorn I searched for the right words to describe it: unique, original, addictive, disturbing, psychologically horrific … tragic. It’s has “a terrible beauty” as Keats or Yeats might have said. It’s the most superb gothic romantasy I’ve ever read—something Byron and Shelley might have devoured. Really, words are inadequate. You’ll have to read it yourself to understand and feel its effects. Know it will haunt you.
Every line is strangely lyrical, painted with intensity and shadowed with darkness, and yet, the story ends wrapped in ribbons of sunlight. If you open to any page, you’ll find something quoteworthy.
“He is not a bird meant for flight; he is broken wings and forgotten petals left to dry between pages of an old book and he doesn’t know how to believe he could be anything else” (259).
Evander. The boy on the cover smothered by thorns. Locked up and drugged for years in a musty room in a billionaire’s mansion—confused and imprisoned until one day someone unlocks his door and sets him free.
Laurie. The billionaire’s grandson. Beautiful, sarcastic, witty, hurting, desperate, desolate. The object of Evander’s affection, though Evander hates him, justifiably. Laurie attacked Evander when they were ten, beat him and cut him and tried to bury him alive in the garden.
Now they’re seventeen living in a mansion choked by gardens and greenery capable to murder. Grasping at an insane obsession.
And the billionaire’s been murdered. Laurie’s grandfather. Evander’s jailer.
The cover says it all. Evander, embraced by the garden, his flesh ravaged by thorns, his blood oozing. Since the garden had a taste of his blood, it wants him back. The theme of this story is guilt eclipsed by greed. You won’t believe it.
But the message is love.
This is Young Adult Romantasy at its finest … and darkest.
Stephen King is a little like cilantro—you either love him or hate him. Maybe he even tastes like soap to some people … or something worse. Personally, I think he’s brilliant. I read The Green Mile the past five nights before bed (430 pages). He is a tad long-winded at times, but he also rounds out his complex characters to the max. King used two techniques to write this story, beginning one rainy night in October thirty years ago.
The first was to write fast in serialized chunks and sell it in small installments the way Charles Dickens did many years ago. He says in the Afterword: “I don’t think I’d want to do another serial novel (if only because the critics get to kick your ass six times instead of just once), but I wouldn’t have missed the experience for the world” (431).
The second was to frame the story: Paul Edgecombe, at age 104, is looking back to 1932—the last year he worked as prison guard, boss, and chief executioner on the Green Mile at Cold Mountain Penitentiary where the electric chair was still in use. It’s a horrific way to die. There are four executions in this book and some suffer more than others. Arlen Bitterbuck, a Cherokee elder; Ed Delacroix, a Cajun with a pet mouse named Mr. Jingles; Wild Bill Wharton who never makes it to the chair; and finally John Coffey, an enormous, quiet black man innocent of the crime for which he’s condemned and gifted with healing powers.
I love that there’s always a shot of the supernatural in King’s emotionally-driven stories. I can’t help but do that myself because, when you think about it, there are supernatural forces at play all the time everywhere around us.
The antics among the guards on The Green Mile and the hope that John Coffey will somehow escape his grizzly fate kept me reading and reading. There will never be another mouse as magical as Mr. Jingles.
The film version starred Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecombe. Stephen King swung by the set to test out the electric chair.
The first paragraph is a warning I ignore just like our protagonist, Amy Whey, does when she opens the door to Roux. Perhaps because it starts off so innocently. A group of suburban women are meeting for their usual “Brain-Dead Mommies Book Club.” Twenty plus of them. The club is Char’s creation so she runs things until the night Angelica Roux shows up, sinks into Char’s leather winged chair and highjacks the club. The drinks are flowing, the women gulping and slurring. After all, this is their night away from husbands and kids. Bring on the G and T. Roux suggests they all introduce themselves since she’s new and, before you know it, they’re all figuring out their spirit animals.
Now that’s something I would have been sucked right into.
The dialogue gets raucous, the tone dangerous, and then Roux introduces the game. “It’s like Never Have I Ever, but for grown-ups.” All you have to do is confess the worst thing you’ve done. Except every round changes—today, last week, last month, last year. Ever. And suddenly Amy realizes Roux knows a secret from her past. A big dark secret. The kind that can blow your domestic life to smithereens. “I could feel it leaking into my bloodstream, spreading like a toxin through me.”
So there you have it, and that’s just the cliffhanger of chapter one.
This is domestic noir, a twisted psychological thriller that raises the stakes threat by threat, reveal by reveal. As an added bonus, Jackson draws an extended metaphor throughout. Amy teaches scuba diving and Jackson hurls us into the deep end of the ocean with just enough air to keep going. We find ourselves exploring wrecks, dredging the silty bottom, and keeping perfectly still as the sharks hover. It’s grim. It’s dark. It involves every kind of domestic issue you can imagine: cheating and betrayal, child abuse, rape, kidnapping, drugs and alcohol, manslaughter. Murder.
Creating this book list was much harder than it looks. First, I had to choose books that had a similar bent to my own book, To Charm a Killer. Then I had to craft a short review to introduce each story in the light of the overarching theme. It had been so long since I’d read Interview with the Vampire, I bought the paperback and reread it. I was surprised at the depth of character, the broodiness of Louie, and the madness of Lestat.
One of my favorite reviewers writes this of To Render a Raven:
“I think the true draw of this novel for me, and this is probably true of the whole series, now that I think about it, is the intricate psychology of the characters, who are complex, nuanced, sympathetic, and occasionally, deeply irritating— a sign of just how invested I’ve become, and how well drawn their inner lives, as well as outer adventures, really are. Highly recommended read.”
To Charm a Killer started it all. As I complete the draft of Book 5, my mind drifts back to everything that’s come before, Estrada’s complex psychological journey, his desires, his loves and losses, and how he’s changed over two years of his fictional life—something that’s impacted several years of my life and continues to inspire me.
Finally, I recommend Shepherd.com as it’s a very cool, professionally vetted site. You can search for comp lists on all kinds of topics. For example, if you’re looking for adult fiction featuring witches, try this. If you’re an author, contact them to find out how to create your own list.
