Book review: The Hunger Games

Why do I have time for this? Im supposed to do haematology for exams!! anyways, I wrote most of this in an email correspondence to a friend so ill just copy, paste and edit a bit:
The Hunger Games:
...a bit too sappy to be a good dystopian novel, but then again i think the author is trying to appeal to all those twilight lovers...anyways apart from the entire last half where katniss is too stupid (blind/not versed in these things) to realise how much that boy loves her, and to what extend she has feelings for him as well, its all right...

MY FRIEND: i know what you mean, katniss's character really pissed me off cos she was so annoying. and yeah i think its quite twilight like with the peeta/gale thing.

I must admit, i was very very bored and did end up reading the first of the twilight books like 2 years ago - and bella just really really pissed me off - mixture between dumb blonde and immature little girl that cannot think. It just kept going in circles! I love him, he loves me, we can't be together, I love him, he loves me, we can't be together... for f*** 400 pages?!? too much for me...

Katniss is fine - at least there is a sense of honor and a braveness and some sort of intelligence to her - apart from when it comes to boys. just sometimes there are some glitches in her character - the way she doesn't get the honor thing on the roof with peeta before the games, the way she doesn't get the love thing - like ever, the way she sometimes reacts quite cold hearted even though we all know she is super protective. That doesn't fit. It almost feels a bit like the author stole some personality traits of bella (in the love sense) and stuck them into katniss. Whats worse, the circles seem to be starting as well. Perhaps the author realized that this sells well (see twilight) and decided to add some in too? It probably works the trick on the wider audience, but I still think its incoherent with the rest of her character.

Another point: the dystopian world with its problems is only created as a backdrop, and not (as a good dystopian novel should) in order to draw parallels to the world we live in and criticize society. It feels like a bit of a genre mix: not really dystopian, not really an adventure novel, nor a romantic one. That means it feels a bit mindless - action, fear, love, that sells well, but it would have been better with a bit more essence. You can tell its written to appeal to a wide audience, motivation of money as my english teacher used to put it...

Despite my ranting, its well written, "kurzweilig" and a nice read - with the potential of more, but that was sadly not exploited.