I waffled between giving this 3 or 4 stars. I initially leaned more towards 4, but the more I thought about this the more I realized that I was just a little underwhelmed by the climax of the trilogy. I'd be giving that extra star based more on my love for the previous books, which isn't entirely fair. 
 Part of what I somewhat liked in this book was that some of the elements I was slowly starting to get tired of (everyone wanting in Katniss's pants or loving her, for example) were slightly addressed here. This is a slight spoiler, but at one point Peeta is brainwashed into hating Katniss and she essentially has to prove herself to him. Sorta. This is ultimately glossed over and never really dealt with in detail, nor is her relationship with Peeta or Gale. It's enough to where I'm mostly satisfied, but there's never really any in-depth plot building as far as the relationship and Katniss's choice goes. It just sort of "happens" and considering the amount of buildup there was to this point as far as the romances went, it fizzled instead of providing a bang. This was one of the elements that I both liked and disliked as far as the book went. 
 What really grabs the reader are the moments when tragic deaths occur. Collins has a great way of bringing incredibly sad scenes across and these scenes are unarguably the strongest. It's when Collins has to wrap everything up and give us a happy ending that she seems to sort of go out with more of a whimper than a bang. As always, the themes in the books are fairly strong and will be a great discussion point for many. The excess of the Capitol and the destruction of war are brought in decently well and while they're not as well worked in as they were in the last two books, they're still decently done. 
 It's just that this is such a let down after the strength of the previous two books. I like it well enough and the narrator does a decent job, but this just wasn't the strongest book in the series by a long shot. I can only hope that when they make the movie adaptation that they work on strengthening the book's plot and working on the romance and its resolution, because otherwise I'm not certain how they'll be able to get two movies out of it.