By Kyra Binney ’26
Updated 11:50 a.m. EDT, 20 February 2026
As a longtime fan of the Hunger Games Trilogy, I was ecstatic when news of Suzanne Collin’s newest installment to the series, Sunrise on the Reaping, was set to release in early 2025. With the promise of a film coming out in the next couple of years, I eagerly preordered the book so I could read it as soon as possible.
In the vein of featuring District Twelve Victors, Sunrise on the Reaping features Haymitch Abernathy, a 16-year-old boy waking up on the morning of the Reaping, where a boy and girl from different districts are chosen to compete in a vicious fight to the death called the Hunger Games. As opposed to the Haymitch from the original trilogy, this Haymitch is drastically different. He’s young, happy, and not dependent on alcohol. All Haymitch wants is to make it past the Reaping and spend the day with his family and the girl he loves.
When this book was announced, I imagine people were wondering how Collins would expand the story surrounding Haymitch’s games. The readers already had a good idea of what Haymitch’s games were like from Catching Fire, when Katniss and Peeta watched a recording of the second Quarter Quell, the year that Haymitch won the Hunger Games. Readers knew that despite Haymitch winning the games, his life went south after his victory. How would Collins create something new for her audience about a story they already thought they knew? But Collins provided in her most recent book that there was more behind Haymitch’s games than readers were originally led to believe.
At its core, Sunrise on the Reaping is about how easily perception of truth can be manipulated. Throughout the book, Haymitch grapples with the Capitol as they try to rewrite the story to suit their narrative. Despite winning their games and his attempts to disrupt them, the Capitol was still in control. Reading it, I remember feeling shocked at how easily the Capitol rewrote the games to hide the truth, and how wrong readers’ perceptions of the 2nd Quarter Quell were. It goes to show how even we, as the readers, were so willing to agree with a twisted version of events rather than question the Capitol’s intentions.
The real tragedy is that readers know how this book ends. Readers know what will happen to the Tributes in the arena and to Haymitch afterwards. Despite knowing this, the book had me hooked from the start and challenged everything I thought I knew. While it felt as though Collins was attempting to connect this book too much to the other trilogies through character cameos and references to Collins’ other prequel, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. She created a deeper sense of the world of the Capitol and how deeply these games ran in their culture.
If you haven’t read the book, then I suggest you make time in your busy schedule to do so, especially with the movie coming out this summer. If you don’t, you’re missing out on another great book by Suzanne Collins. Overall, I’d give the book a solid 8.5/10. ★
