What to Read After Hunger Games

If you're like us, after reading the The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1) you want to keep reading books like it. Here's what to read next after Hunger Games is finished.

Lots of books could be called dystopian - The Road, Fahrenheit 451, among many others - but The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1) broke new ground. It appeals to teens (and, of course many many other people) and stars a female. (Quick: think of a non-YA post-apocalyptic book that stars a female. One who doesn't generally act like a fainting Victorian lady. It's really difficult, right?) Cormac McCarthy and Suzanne Collins have different writing styles but lots of authors have produced stories like the Hunger Games recently. Here are what we think are the best of those books.

Published for Adults

We think a lot of great books are published for teens or kids. Adults should read, period. Read what you like; don't worry how publishers market it. Both of the following books are likely to be separated from the other Hunger-Games-like books because publishers call them "adult books." We think they're worth reading.

A nuclear blast fused people to whatever was closest at the time of detonation: a baby doll, a flock of passing birds, a younger brother. Now what remains of society is very clearly separated. The "have's" live ordered predictable lives; the "have-not's" live animalistically. If you're anything like us, you'll read Pure in one sitting. Somehow - despite children not being pitted in a contest to the death - Pure is more violent than Hunger Games. And there is a bit of a Luke-and-Leia moment. Among the qualities that make Pure a very worthy read are the world-building, plotting, and stark allusions to our own society.

Age of Miracles is narrated by an 11-year-old girl, placing her about 5 years younger than most recent dystopian protagonists. Nature is to blame for this world - the Earth spins more slowly, bit by bit, until humans begin to notice. How people react to the changes is what causes dystopia. This apocalyptic vision seems likely: the government doesn't react quickly and people struggle to maintain their normal routines until they become impractical and then impossible. But people's hearts keep beating and they must figure out how to continue on for as long as possible. For an 11-year-old girl that means worrying about friends at school, her piano lessons, and her parents' sleeping in the same bed. The Age of Miracles is a true examination of growing up, despite the environment.

Published for Teens

Again, the disclaimer: publishers market these books to teens, but what matters is that the stories are good. You might be an adult choosing books off the "kids" shelves in a bookstore, but why let that stop you from reading something good?

The influence of Hunger Games is clear when you begin reading lots of dystopian YA. Maybe there just aren't that many types of stories to tell in the sub-genre? Even if that's the case, we still liked the books below.

Life as We Knew It was published before Hunger Games and is unique. The world is bleaker and the teen girl narrator behaves like a teenage girl, not a mini-adult. She relies on her family as much as she relies on herself to survive a world made very bleak after a meteor pushes the moon closer to the Earth. Reading it, you hope you'd be as smart as the mother is. Children still behave like children here. Circumstances change them, but they still have teenage-ry emotions. Perhaps the youngest sibling should get the only meal of the day when food becomes scarce, but the olders siblings are still jealous and a bit angry. Susan Beth Pfeffer clearly demonstrates the role of luck in an apocalypse. We first experience this world rurally, away from the ocean, and you know those on the coasts and in cities are living very differently. In book two - The Dead and the Gone - and three - This World We Live in - you find out about those lives.

Delirium's dystopia is a world in which emotion is medically destroyed. Love is dangerous and prohibited. Society discourages falling in love but just to make sure, a medical procedure is performed when teens graduate from school. Of course, for a portion of teens, they fall in love first. What's stronger: love or societal obligations? Lauren Oliver writes page-turners. If you want to read about smart, head-strong teenage girls, read this. And, happily, you don't have to wait for the sequel (and you won't want to after the cliffhanger ending to book 1).

Matched (Matched Trilogy)'s society is similar to Delirium's: the government chooses spouses. True love is prohibited. Again, this teen girl narrator falls in love before her "match" is confirmed. #2 is already out: Crossed (Matched #2)

Divergent (Divergent Trilogy) is maybe Older Sister's favorite of these books after Hunger Games. Teens take a test that determines their skills and assigns them a career. Sixteen-year-old Beatrice, the test determines, could be anything - a dangerous assignment in a world where roles are everything. #2 is also already out: Insurgent (Divergent Trilogy #2)

In the Chemical Garden Trilogy #01: Wither world, medicine has gone awry. The younger generations - upon whom science experimented - die before 25. In these circumstances opulence thrives, at least for those who have the means. Boys born to elderly parents kidnap brides. Unsatisfactory girls are shot. Sixteen-year-old (yes, 16 is the magic age in these books) Rhine is kidnapped by a husband who actually loves her. He wants her to live out the remaining five years of her life inside his walled estate. But she loves the eunuch servant. Again, #2 is already out: Chemical Garden Trilogy #02: Fever

Across the Universe is for those who like a more sci-fi bent to their strong teen girl heroines in strange worlds. Amy's family boarded a spaceship in a medical coma-state expecting to awake on a new planet, ready to populate it. She wakes up centuries later but decades before the ship's arrival. Everyone she knew on Earth is long dead, her parents are still frozen, and the other people on the ship only know its artificial environment. #2 is out, but I haven't read it yet despite having had it on my bedside to-read list for about 6 months: A Million Suns: An Across the Universe Novel (Across the Universe)

Good Bets We Haven't Actually Read Yet

The following 2 books are also on my bedside to-read list. Other reviewers have thought they were good for Hunger Games fans, so I think they're worth mentioning too.
Under the Never Sky's teen girl must survive a wasteland.

Shatter Me (Shatter Me)'s heroine kills anyone she touches and thus is either jailed or a weapon.

What else have you read that's like Hunger Games?