[Filling the Space is a flexible column where our writers could vent, deconstruct, and work their way around the emotions brought on by TV, films, books, music, and key moments in pop culture. This isn’t meant to be analytical, but instead, a way for us to explore our feelings.]
It’s been three weeks now, and I still can’t stop thinking about Sunrise on the Reaping. I adore The Hunger Games trilogy, and I appreciated The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but I didn’t think Haymitch’s story would hit me this hard. I didn’t expect the romance and the pain and the longing, and how masterfully Suzanne Collins would deliver an origin story that feels deeply earned.
It feels especially poignant and heartbreaking, given everything that’s happening in the real world. It feels terrorizing knowing that so many people will likely relate to Haymitch in a way they didn’t think they could before. Ultimately, three weeks, and I still don’t have the right words to talk about how the phrase, “I love you like all-fire,” might stay etched in me for a long, long time. I still don’t have the words for how it feels like, even the space within the words holds meaning. Collins does something so extraordinary in Sunrise on the Reaping that I’m not quite sure is present in the original trilogy. It could be the fact that we know what’s coming for Haymitch, but there’s something else here—something indescribable.
The sadness sprinkled into every page makes Sunrise on the Reaping feel that much more profound, but God, it almost feels like maybe there’s hope, too. Hope, that if Haymich could live to see an end to all the turmoil, then he can have something to hold onto. I don’t know—as the title of this article says, Sunrise on the Reaping broke me. But it also healed something in me. How is that possible? How is a book this painful and agonizing one of the best things I’ve read in a while? How am I already itching to reread it even when I sobbed so hard the first time I had puffy eyes the next morning? The movie is right around the corner, set to release in 2026, but are we even ready for that? Are we ready to be destroyed again? I’m not.
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What I am ready to do is scream about it to anyone who’ll listen, even when I can’t find the right words to describe how perfect it is. What I can note, though, is that this really is Collins’ best work. From the writing to the plot, she captures something so deeply relatable in Haymich’s voice that it hits twice as hard. It’s a prequel that not only honors the character but it fills in all the blanks so prestigiously that as authors, we should all take notes. It’s a perfect book through and through, even as it rips your heart out from the beginning and tears it to shreds until the very last page.