Forget everything you think you know about Haymitch’s games, because Suzanne Collins has done it again with her new book “Sunrise on the Reaping.” Like Katniss and Peeta when they reviewed his games in “Catching Fire,” we too were unwitting victims of Capitol propaganda.

“Sunrise on the Reaping” follows Haymitch Abernathy, the District 12 mentor in the original trilogy, during his own Hunger Games: the 50th Quarter Quell.

The series is set in the dystopian country of Panem at an unspecified point in the future. Every year, each of the 12 districts send one boy and one girl — aged 12 to 18 — to participate in the Hunger Games as a punishment for rebelling against the Capitol.

In Haymitch’s games, instead of the normal 24 tributes (two tributes from each of the 12 districts), the number is doubled to 48 — four from each district. Spoilers ahead!

Collins opens the book with a slew of quotes from George Orwell, David Hume and William Blake as she draws parallels between Panem and our world today. Propaganda is a central theme in the book, and Collins drives home the idea that anything can be manipulated for political means, even a beloved series like her own.

It felt like my jaw was hitting the floor every other chapter, starting with the District 12 reaping. From what we know about reapings in Panem, the only departure from the norm is if someone volunteers for the Hunger Games, which we know hadn’t ever happened in District 12 until Katniss in the first book.

Except Haymitch isn’t reaped, and he doesn’t volunteer. One of the boys who was reaped tries to escape and is shot and killed, so the Capitol restages and rigs the reaping to pick Haymitch. The rest of the country only sees Haymitch getting reaped — none of the violence that led up to it — being the first of many examples of propaganda.

The four tributes who leave District 12 are Haymitch, the sweetheart Louella, oddsmaker Wyatt and fiery Maysilee. I loved this group of four, and Collins did a great job of making readers feel for them in the pages we spent with them, which made their deaths more devastating.

Maysilee was easily my favorite. Her razor-sharp criticisms of Drusilla’s (their version of Effie Trinket from the original series) fashion choices cracked me up every time, but behind those mean digs was genuine anger towards the Capitol. This made for a great character arc.

During the tribute parade, Louella is thrown out of the chariot and trampled. To maintain the appearance of power, the Capitol replaces her with a drugged body double from District 11. I frequently found myself in shock and disturbed at some of the things I read, but knowing the way Collins writes, it was to prove a point.

The Capitol does this throughout the book: changing the way things appear to happen to both maintain power and beat the districts down into submission. The districts don’t know they can fight back if they never see it happening.

The violence in the games was jarring as well: kids are attacked by unassuming mutts (Maysilee by candy-pink birds) or brutally killed by their fellow tributes (a weak and starving Wellie by Career tribute Silka). There were many times I thought I knew what was going to happen but was proven wrong time and time again. Collins’ propaganda was masterful and duped us all.

Reader speculation was ultimately proven right, as Lenore Dove — Haymitch’s girlfriend — is a part of the Covey and somehow related to Lucy Gray Baird from “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.” There were Covey references interspersed throughout the book, which were a nice callback.

I didn’t love Haymitch’s insistence on trying to destroy the arena and was much more interested in what was happening to the other characters than what Haymitch was up to under the arena. It was a bit of a full circle moment, as it paralleled Katniss destroying her arena in “Catching Fire,” and she succeeded where he couldn’t. This was the only weak spot in an otherwise solid book.

Production of the “Sunrise on the Reaping” movie, set to come out in November 2026, is ramping up, which leaves me curious to see how they will approach the movie for this book. The series has a trend of toning the content down for the silver screen, but despite the violence being as appalling as it was, the story doesn’t really work without it. Will “Sunrise on the Reaping” be the first R-rated movie in the series? We’ll soon find out.

“Sunrise on the Reaping” is surely a top contender for Collins’ best work. From the plot to the parallels and the doomed yet irresistible characters, Collins doesn’t just light the fuse but makes sure we feel the explosion.