Book Review: Catching Fire

Synopsis

By winning the annual Hunger Games, District 12 tributes Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have secured a life of safety and plenty for themselves and their families, but because they won by defying the rules, they unwittingly become the faces of an impending rebellion.

Comments

Surprisingly, this book is less violent then book 1 of this series.  If your teen had no trouble with The Hunger Games, this one won’t cause any problems.  Overall, it is less intense, less graphic and less disturbing then book 1.

Language

None [?]

Sexual Content

Teens makeout. Teens sleep in the same bed for comfort from nightmares and it becomes a topic of gossip. A government man lures starving young women into his bed in exchange for money. A man kisses a teen girl, cathing her off-guard. A teen girl strips out of her clothes in front of a teen boy to irritate his girlfriend who is with him.

Drugs/Alcohol

Teens buy liquor for their alcoholic mentor, described as being ‘wasted’, ‘inebriated’. Adults take an upper pill. Adults give teens sleeping pills. A healer gives a teen a shot of morphine for pain. A teen gets drunk. Previous champions oftentimes become drug addicts or alchoholics.

Violence/Disturbing

Katniss recalls how several people died in the Games, some pretty horribly. Father was ‘blown to bits’ in the mines. Soliders execute an elderly man. A teen is publically beaten by soliders. The government blows up a factory, intentionally killing the people inside. Katniss makes a noose and hangs a dummy from it.  People are thrown together and have to kill each other to survive.  Some description of deaths and thought processes. Weapons include a trident, bows and arrows, knifes. 

Social/Family

Adults allude to wanting to alter teen’s appearance through plastic surgery when she’s older. Behavior at a party means that people gorge themselves, then vomit, then gorge themselves again. People are uprising against the government. Teens lie about being pregnant to garnish sympathy.

Religion/Spiritual

None