The Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins hit the ball out of the field. In fact, she knocked the ball out of the stadium, and it traveled with such velocity that it created a sonic boom. Her Young Adult trilogy started with The Hunger Games.

I tore through The Hunger Games with the utmost gratitude to the author: I was on a plane and needed an alternate reality. I chomped pages on the edge of my airline seat: the choices the main character has to make are horrifying. But you can't stop reading. Rarely has any author used first person, present tense with such punch.

Then came the second book, Catching Fire. It was BETTER. Who says this about a sequel? Almost no one. The best example of how good Catching Fire was comes from a friend's daughter--now a teenager--who called her mother at work to say, "I have book emergency. I have to read or at least have--in my hand--a copy of the second book in the trilogy. Help me find a copy." The girl had finished the first book not ten minute before this declaration.

So now adult nerds like me who love, love, love gripping and great sci/fi fantasy YA are waiting for Tuesday, 8/24/10, when the third and final book in the trilogy, The Mockingjay, will be released.

My expectations are impossibly high. I have been hanging onto a gift card to the University Bookstore ready since June. I'm waiting; two more days. And you?