My daughter has a real love of books, she gets this from me, and as she is nearly a teenager now i have found that we have started sharing somne of reading choices, with this book being one of them!

The book in question is - "The hunger games" by Suzanne Collins".

Set in the future (not too far away either!), the world is very different from the one we know.
Each year, and for the entertainement of the "Capitol" (the rich and powerful city that controls every other area), twelve boys and twelve girls are balloted from the surrounding areas to go into a specially designed arena to fight to the death, all whilst being streamed live on the television.

After the ballot has been taken in area 12, Katniss Everdeen is horrified to find that her much younger sister has beeen drawn to fight for her life, so steps forward to take her place, throwing herself into a life, death and survival situation, but Katniss is an old hand at this game of life............will she survive?

This book impressed and surprised me too, being aimed towards the younger end of the market i found that some of the deaths and situations described were a bit close to the knuckle, ok for me as a horror genre fan, but probably not so good for my daughter (though she did read some of it, then lost interest).

The book has a real fast paced feeling to it, with the first half of the book being the main characters life and background, and the second half being solely set in the arena following many of the characters in the "hunger games", most of which had a real feel of menace to it.

The characters were all fantastic, and all very different coming from very different backgrounds, Katniss being the daughter of a deacesed miner, meaning she has had to learn to survive or starve to death, as her mother became so depressed for a time that she stopped functioning, leaving her to look after her younger sister Primrose.

Peeta is the son of the local and very affluent baker, he is very well spoken, well educated and rich, but has always had a soft spot for a certain young lady who lost her father in a mining accident, he knows how he must play the games!

Gale is Katniss's best friend/ love interest, also losing his father in the same mining accident as Katniss's father, they soon become friends after having to break the rules and start to hunt for meat to feed thgeir families, he soon starts see that he could be replced by Peeta in Katniss's affections.

This book is actually really good, there is plenty of action and emotion, and once the book had got into the arena i found it extremely difficult to put the book down until the end, though at no time did i feel the book would end as i was expecting, there are moments that literally had my heart in my mouth!

To the point that this is aimed at the younger audience, i feel that the slightly older teenager would love this book, there is no bad language or sexual content, but for me at times the elaborate ways that some of the children died would be a bit upsetting for the younger child (there is a particularly horrible one involving a young girl of 7/8 years old, it actually made me cry!).

Price wise this was purchased as the whole set (3 books), for £5.00 from www.thebookpeople.co.uk and is also available from "the works" or www.asda.com though you will pay a little more there.

This was a really good read and would thoroughly recommend it, though if giving to a child read first for your own piece of mind!

Thanks for reading x