The Hunger Games/Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins; young adult, science fiction; 384 pages

I knew this series was addictive, but I've been putting off reading it until a little closer to the final volume's release. My timing worked out well, as this was just the thing to shake me out of the reading slump I've been in. The plot's pretty familiar by now, so I won't go into it too much. I will say that I usually don't care for books where each chapter ends in a cliffhanger, but here it worked pretty well. The whole book is one big cliffhanger, anyway, so I didn't think it was gimmicky. I loved the two main characters, and the relationship that develops over the course of the book is wonderfully done. And of course, there was the action, which was great. I loved the idea of a dispassionate group of "gamemakers" who are essentially gods within the confines of the arena. I also love the ending, which has closure enough, but still made me want to dive into the next volume (which I'll be doing shortly).