Mockingjay - Suzanne  Collins 4.5 STARSWhich I'm rounding up to 5 because once this book got its claws in me, it dug really deep.Mockingjay is one of the most polarizing books in my TBR shelf, friends who usually agree on book preferences take opposite sides of the poles on this one. Since I'm coming in 3 years late in this party, I decided to write a review coming from the perspective of someone who wasn't fawning over this series at its height.I'm very surprised to like it as much as I did. Ends of series/trilogies tend to be all over the place, covering as much base as possible. But this felt frenetic without losing the reader under its spell in the process. I don't know how much selling the film rights to the series affected Suzanne Collins' writing but this just read like a summer blockbuster, readily adaptable to the big screen. Not really complaining but the difference from the other books was very palpable everywhere: emotionally, physically and psychologically. All leaving me exhausted but sated on all points.This without sacrificing the quality of the plot twists (which did come out very twisted) which complemented very well with the darker, almost gory-dirty feel of this book. The Peeta-Katniss-Gale conundrum was handled pretty well. I have my preferences but I never really saw this as the focal point of the series so I was pretty satisfied with how it played out and eventually resolved. The entire District 13 vs. The Capitol was well-thought out, the entire 3rd act was brilliant… save for the end (but not for the reasons everyone else seems to be hung up on). I actually loved that scene between Snow and Katniss at the end with the roses but I was hoping the ambiguity of the truth was preserved than implied in the end. Personally, I feel it just fits well with the not-so subliminal commentary on human frailties of vanity, vengeance and pride. "But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction."It is far from being iron-clad logical (whatever happened to the rest of the world? Isn't Panem like set in Chicago? Oh wait... wrong dystopian book O.o) and my nitpicking eyes were twitching ever so often, but at the end of it all, they were just outweighed by what I'm taking away from this series. I'm not claiming to be well-read enough on this genre but if this is the primordial soup from which all YA-dystopians stemmed from, what creations eventually evolving from this will certainly be anything but pedestrian.