Sunrise on the Reaping
Suzanne Collins, 2025
★ 4.49 from 1.4m ratings on Goodreads
Science fiction FantasyYoung adultRomance
Before he was District 12's ruined victor, Haymitch Abernathy was a boy with a girl, a family, and a reaping. The 50th Hunger Games, from the inside. A solemn, memory-haunted read, paced like a countdown, with grief and dread pressing through plain, direct prose.
Feels like grief, dread and melancholy. About memory, power and war.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want to see Haymitch before the Games and are drawn to stories about grief, loyalty, and power. Some readers find the arena action repetitive and the callbacks heavy, so it may test your patience if you want a less familiar route through Panem.
Why read it
It fills in the making of a ruined victor, letting you sit with memory, loss, and the cost of survival without tidy comfort.
A page from the book
What survives of a people after the roads between them are closed
Her people were great travelers once, going from district to district to perform their music. Tam Amber remembers it, as he was about my age when the war ended and the Peacekeepers rounded up the Covey, killing all the adults and confining the kids to our district. What readers say
Many readers describe being emotionally wrecked and deeply attached to Haymitch, with grief, nostalgia, and love driving strong reactions. Others found the story repetitive and over-reliant on fan service, with disappointing character and plot choices.
Suzanne Collins.Collins wrote for children's television, including Nickelodeon's Clarissa Explains It All, long before she dreamed up Panem.
Books that feel like this
More by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins, 2008
In a dystopian America, survival means a dangerous dance between rebellion and the crushing power of a totalitarian Capitol.
Mockingjay
Suzanne Collins, 2010
The final Hunger Games volume: the girl who survived the state's televised death match is now the face of a war she never wanted to lead.
The Hunger Games Trilogy (Hunger Games / Catching Fire / Mockingjay)
Suzanne Collins, 2008
A girl volunteers for a televised death match to save her sister, then quietly turns the cameras into a weapon.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Sunrise on the Reaping for me?
- You may like it if you want to see Haymitch before the Games and are drawn to stories about grief, loyalty, and power. Some readers find the arena action repetitive and the callbacks heavy, so it may test your patience if you want a less familiar route through Panem.
- What is Sunrise on the Reaping like?
- A solemn, memory-haunted read, paced like a countdown, with grief and dread pressing through plain, direct prose. Feels like grief, dread and melancholy. About memory, power and war.
- What should I read after Sunrise on the Reaping?
- If you liked Sunrise on the Reaping, try Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J. K. Rowling), New Moon (Stephenie Meyer) and The Giver (Lois Lowry).
A taste of the feed
What a friend paints on her ceiling when she misses you.
Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautifully painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about them all the same; Harry thought they breathed. What appeared to be fine golden chains wove around the pictures, linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or so, Harry realized that the chains were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends...friends...friends...friends... Harry felt a great rush of affection for Luna.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows · J. K. Rowling
Grief keeps its own clock, and it does not keep good time.
Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.
New Moon · Stephenie Meyer
A word that sounds like mercy is used for the worst punishment.
NEEDLESS TO SAY, HE WILL BE RELEASED, the voice had said, followed by silence. There was an ironic tone to that finally message, as if the Speaker found it amusing; and Jonas had smiled a little, though he knew what a grim statement it had been. For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.
The Giver · Lois Lowry
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