The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

I felt like a lot of people about this book going into it: I did not want to read Snow's hard childhood sob story, designed to have the reader sympathize with the poor misunderstood villain.

Coriolanus Snow, son of a once rich and influential family that was left penniless by the war, is not an awful evil person, but he is also not a nice person turned bad by his circumstances. He is a self-absorbed, selfish boy too focused on his own problems to consider the feelings and lives of the people around him. He has small inklings of guilt but is ultimately too comfortable to do anything about it. This makes him a very realistic and gripping character and I enjoyed witnessing his personality subtly change over the course of the story a lot.

The book is not for everyone though. The actual games (usually my favorite part) were underwhelming to me, watching them from the outside through Snow is just not as gripping.
The book is also paced very oddly, and I had a hard time actually investing myself in the story, the plot mostly just sort of chugs along with very little tension.

I didn't hate it; I think Snow is characterized very well and getting to know more about the origins of the hunger games was cool but didn't enjoy it very much either.