You don’t expect a young-adult novel that depicts a threadbare love triangle with as much gravity as a tense rebellion to end on a feel-bad note. Most YA books, especially those that debuted in the early aughts, used their heightened worlds as a vehicle for romance. Sophisticated sci-fi and fantasy came second.
Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games saga changed that expectation in the 2010s. On some level, this trilogy is just like its YA contemporaries: Collins’ prose is almost numbingly spartan, and her protagonists are unbearably one-note. The love triangle is also difficult to root for either way you turn (though, let’s be clear, Everlark is the right answer), but the series doggedly commits to the charade to the very end.
