The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins

What can I say? I'm probably the last librarian in America to read The Hunger Games, and I couldn't put my Kindle down! Shirley Jackson meets Margaret Atwood in Collins' coming of age post-apocalyptic survival challenge. Collins treats the gruesome proceedings with just the right touch of compassion, yet forces the reader to acknowledge that the horrific games are part and parcel of life in Panem. I would have felt let down by the ending, had I not known that there's more to come in the second book, which I promptly bought when I finished this one. 384 p.