Yay! I just finished this book, and wow does it suck you in somewhere around half-way through the book. I liked The Hunger Games but the premise of the second book seemed more vague and I didn't really know what was going to happen. I think I ended up liking this book a tiny bit more than The Hunger Games. To be honest, in the first book, I thought Peeta was ultimately faking everything and was going to betray Katniss, or he was just kind tedious. And I was sort of getting that impression in Part 1 of this book as well, and that Gale was being a passive aggressive jerk. But once Part 2 hit, I was invested in the characters again, and the hints of rebellion that were starting to snowball. 
 Once again, I kind of had problems keeping track of some of the contestants, especially because you can tell some of them are just destined to be "red shirts". The ones that do stand out, though, made the storyline more intriguing, since I didn't know how they were going to get out of making them likable, but then having to kill them. The ending came really quickly, and in parts of the action scenes I found myself having to flip back a few pages to re-read, but that's possibly because I was skimming so I could find out what would happen next. I don't know why, but when books have middle novels that end on a cliffhanger mainly for set up of the next/final novel, it bugs me way less than when movies do it (*cough* Matrix Reloaded, I'm looking at you *cough*) Needless to say, this book ends that way as well and I'm glad I didn't get into this series when everyone was waiting with bated breath for Mockingjay.