Book Review: Hunger Pains by The Harvard Lampoon

I was fooled into buying this book by its blurb, a few surprisingly good reviews on Goodreads and a great discount on Amazon.

While readable, the book is not laugh-out-loud funny. It does have some things going for it like the wacky names (eg: Haymitch Abernathy’s character is called "Buttitch", Katniss’ character is called “Kantkiss Neverclean”) and a few funny set pieces. However, I expected to read a serious parody of the Hunger Games and not an desperate attempt to be funny in every sentence, which the book eventually becomes. But I think what put me off (as it will almost everybody who reads it) is the incredible dumbness of Katniss/ Kantkiss’ character; it was simply too hard to accept and even if it was needed to be done, required much more finesse.

Read it, strictly if you are a Hunger Games fan.