Katniss just wanted to survive the Hunger Games and protect her family from the evil President Snow, but she inadvertently inspired all of the districts to rebel against the Capital. Now District 13 has rescued Katniss and wants her to become the ultimate symbol of the rebellion as the Mockingjay. However, Snow still has someone close to her held captive, and Katniss fears that any move she makes to aid the uprising will hurt someone she cares about. 
 I alternated between really liking this and being generally irritated. Most of my frustration came from Katniss herself. In the first book while she was often unsure or filled with self-doubt, she never let it overwhelm her, and it was that toughness that enabled her to survive. In this book, Katniss's default reaction seems to be either acting like a sulky teenager when asked to perform as the Mockingjay or to have complete emotional meltdowns that require her to be sedated. 
 It's particularly glaring because at the start of the trilogy Katniss had nothing but contempt for the way her mother gave into depression after the death of her father which left her to find a way to feed them and her sister. Yet in this book, Katniss avoids dealing with issues by hiding in a closet and going to sleep. I could understand why she'd be a bit of a mess at the beginning of the book, and when it looked like she was finally stepping into the role as the face of the rebellion; it made me want to cheer. But it seemed like just minutes later she was unable to cope with anything going on around her again. 
 Plus, with the first person narration of a confused and terrified young woman, we never got a view of the bigger war and what Katniss meant to it. So I couldn't understand why everyone continues to insist that she's such a valuable propaganda tool when she had just one really good on-camera moment after a battle. There could even be an interesting concept there with her not living up to the image she portrayed, but nothing is done with it. 
 There was still a lot I liked about this. The way that Katniss is still being used to some extent by the rebellion and still has to perform for the cameras was a nice touch that kept that reality show absurdity and falseness that ran through all the books. I was especially impressed at just how dark Collins was willing to make this. 
 Maybe the problem is just that I'm not the target audience. As a forty-two year old male sci-fi fan, I was interested in reading about the evolution of a scared but tough young woman into the face of a rebellion against a fascist government while shooting some bad people with arrows. I would have liked more of that and less of the love triangle. But close study of my teenage niece leads me to believe that they kind of like that mushy stuff.