This is the first time I've read this book since it came out years ago. I had to reread it before seeing Mockingjay Part II, because I could remember very little of the plot. Initially when I read it, I went back and forth between rating it highly at four or five stars and rating it at two stars. After reading it for a second time, I'm going to stick with my current four star rating. This review will be divided between problems I remembered from my first read, and how I feel about them now after my second read. 
 I'm not tagging spoilers because this book has been out for five years, and there are movies now. So, not my fault. 
 1. Katniss' endless drug sedation 
 I remembered Katniss being drugged through an absurdly large portion of the book. Katniss is emotional? Drug her. Katniss disagrees with Coin? Drug her up! Katniss flips her shit when she sees Peeta all brainwashed and evil? LET'S JUST DRUG HER UP FOR A WEEK. 
 While I still think she was sedated too much (I believe it's 3 times), it wasn't nearly as extreme or as widespread as I thought. All of them had purpose, usually medical. The only one I'm still irritated about is when she has a meltdown in the field with the roses after she realizes what crossing Snow really means for her family. Let the girl freak out. She's 17, and you all put her in an impossible situation. Crying is not a weakness, you assholes. 
 2. Katniss' (lack of) character development 
 I'm not ashamed to admit that when I read this the first time, I was way more invested in seeing the love triangle resolved than the actual war. In my defense, this was at the tail end of my Twilight Twihard days. I was batshit crazy over love triangles. 
 My problem five years ago was that Katniss had zero character development during the book. This was tied to the sedation point. Every time Katniss made a little bit of progress towards self-awareness, she would be sedated. By the end, she's totally unhinged. 
 There's a term for that, and it's PTSD, which makes complete sense because she had already been through the ringer before she watched her little sister blow up in front of her eyes. She's 17, and she's been through hell. The process she went through to accept herself as the Mockingjay was well done and fitting for a girl at her age with so much riding on her. 
 As for the love triangle, I love how it was resolved. Gale had a hand in the building the bombs that killed Prim. We're not told how much of a hand (because Gale isn't sure), but the damage has already been done. As Katniss says, her memory of him is always going to be tied to that moment. Their part in the war breaks their friendship, and I think that loss for Katniss is much more upsetting than the potential loss of a future romance. The choice between the two was taken away from her, but she had choices taken from her the entire series. 
 3. Finnick 
 Let's be honest: I'm always going to be bitter about Finnick's death. Gale's death would have had more meaning. I understood why Prim had to die: she was the reason why Katniss is involved in all of this in the first place. Her death was senseless, and shows Katniss the futility of everything she's done this series because she couldn't protect the one person she would give up everything for. It's heartbreaking and poetic and cruel. 
 FINNICK THOUGH. 
 His death was literally just to suck the only bit of joy out of the whole book. I'm still pissed about it. 
 4. The epilogue 
 I'm still not thrilled with the ending. I wished it had ended without the epilogue. We know Katniss is going to end up with Peeta. It's obvious. Do you know what we didn't need? THIS LINE. 
 "There are worse games to play." 
 Congratulations, Collins. You ended a great series on the worst closing line I have ever read. It's cliche and horrendous, and crushed my soul when I finished this book. What's worse is the movie ends on this line, and it's still awful.