Spoiler Alert: Be forewarned, I will be addressing the ending so do not read, if you haven't finished.
The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are two of my favorite books for YA, so you can imagine how excited I was for Mockingjay. I finished it in one day and really liked it all along the way until about the last 50 pages.
Katniss is such a great character––complicated and flawed, but yet likable––a combination that is difficult to achieve. Peeta and Gale were similarly flawed yet deeply sketched and interesting. Although markedly different, those two men loved Katniss and I was equally invested in both at the end of Catching Fire and ready to hear who Katniss would choose.
Additionally, the world of the Hunger Games was changing through Katniss and I was so jazzed to see the fruition of the long awaited revolution.
Given my high expectations, I was disappointed in the ending. Katniss spent the majority of the book in a drugged or grief-stricken stupor, with short periods of action that would bring to light the Katniss we all know and love. I took it in stride because I figured it illustrated how 'broken' the Games had made everyone...at least until the end. After Prim's death, I really needed Katniss to stand tall and be galvanized to finish the Games once and for all. Instead, she votes to have another Games with the Capitol's children, sides with Coin, then kills Coin without explaining to the people of Panem her reasons. She acted only to perpetuate the violence and then she...fades. Fades into nothing. She doesn't fight. She isn't defiant. She doesn't choose what is right, despite her personal horrors. In other words, she isn't Katniss.
And then to top it off, after all the romantic drama of the first two books, she doesn't really choose there either. Gale had become different and took himself out of the equation, knowing a future relationship to be lost and so Katniss just kinda falls into Peeta. No choice. No internal explanation. I really needed her to say, "Gale is wrong for me. I need Peeta. I choose Peeta." Instead we got, "hey, Peeta's planting some primroses. Hmm. Guess I'll go shower then."
I also had a real issue about how things ended for Haymitch and Finnick, but I could have gotten past those things had Katniss stayed true to the character that I felt she was. Yes, she was selfish and complicated, but I loved that she fought for those she loved, even if it meant she would die. And by the end, I felt she loved people from nearly every district and the Capitol––and that for them she would have stood up to Coin and Snow and helped end the Games.
I was disappointed. And a bit sad.