Mockingjay

How it reads

Mockingjay is young adult (dystopian young adult, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in an invented world, in the future, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are survival, war and identity. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It's a later book in a series — you'll usually want to start earlier. The ending is bittersweet: it resolves, but at a price. At 390 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's a mega-bestseller — the book everyone seems to have read.