The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Snow lands on top.

This book is during some parts almost ‘boring'
There's no glamour or grand entrance. There is just a city broken by a war and whose hunger games are really not that big yet.
Snow, just eighteen here, and his classmates are assigned to be mentors to the tributes and from the start its clear these are not the hunger games like we know them.
Tributes are dead before they even get to the arena. Tributes are locked away in a zoo and no one to care about them. No one is actually watching the games and classmates talk about how the bad the games are actually, a lot.
But while Snow agrees, it's clear he actually thinks the games are fine. He likes control, wants it, most importantly: needs it and the hunger games give control to the capitol. Make it so, chaos will never ensue. And when chaos does break out: snow doesn't like it one bit. He doesn't like the mockingjays (who are mocking nature by his own words) and basically he doesn't like things he can't understand and in the end: he leaves them.
He takes control, make it so he is the one in control. Killed his friend. Left his lover (who left him? betrayed him? where did she go? where is she now?)
This book is philosophical and rhetorical about the means of war, violence and control. It's a lot about control. The creator of the hunger games confesses he hated the idea and had wanted to rip it, but by means out of his control his idea was put to action.
A lot of the action is near the end of the book and the first 300 pages can be a bit boring or less interesting if you're more into action packed books but if you enjoy character studies and lore it's a very interesting books and gives you another view onto the hunger games.