Books Like The Hunger Games
Can't stop thinking about Panem? Jim's rounded up the best dystopian and action-packed YA novels with fierce heroes, oppressive systems, and revolutions that'll keep your heart pounding.
Jim's Picks
Sunrise on the Reaping
by Suzanne Collins
Divergent
by Veronica Roth
The Maze Runner
by James Dashner
The Giver
by Lois Lowry
Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card
Red Queen
by Victoria Aveyard
Legend
by Marie Lu
An Ember in the Ashes
by Sabaa Tahir
Throne of Glass
by Sarah J. Maas
Why Each Pick
- Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
- Not a read-alike so much as more Panem: Collins's 2025 prequel goes back to the 50th Hunger Games, a Quarter Quell with twice the tributes, and follows a sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy into the arena. The arena and politics are as intense as the original's, and it lands hardest for readers who know the trilogy. The earlier prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, follows a young Coriolanus Snow instead.
- Divergent by Veronica Roth
- The most similar formula: a sixteen-year-old girl in a divided future society, a brutal training process, a secret that makes her dangerous to the system, and a romance woven through the action. Tris narrates in the same urgent first-person present tense as Katniss. Roth's world is less about poverty and spectacle than about identity and conformity. Content note: includes a suicide and an attempted sexual assault.
- The Maze Runner by James Dashner
- Shares the core setup of young people trapped in a deadly arena built by adults who are watching. The difference is mystery: Thomas has no memory, and much of the tension comes from working out what the maze is and why it exists. Less political and less romantic than Collins, with more puzzle-box suspense and monster attacks.
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- The quieter ancestor of YA dystopia. Like Panem, Jonas's community controls its citizens in the name of order, and a young protagonist slowly sees the cost. But there is no arena and no uprising, just a twelve-year-old discovering what has been taken away. It is shorter and gentler, a good option for readers not yet ready for Collins's violence.
- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
- Another story about children trained as weapons by adults who watch their every move. Ender's training at Battle School mirrors Katniss's experience of being watched, managed and used. It is more cerebral and strategic, focused on tactics and manipulation rather than survival. Originally published for adults, it includes violent fights between children.
- Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
- Shares Panem's class divide, here between powered Silvers and powerless Reds, and a heroine from the bottom of that system thrust into the court of its rulers. Mare's ability makes it more fantasy than science fiction, and palace intrigue and a love triangle take up more room than survival. A good fit for readers most gripped by the Capitol scenes.
- Legend by Marie Lu
- Close in mood and politics: an authoritarian Republic, plague in the poorest sectors and two teenagers on opposite sides of the system. Alternating chapters between Day, a wanted criminal, and June, a military prodigy, give it a cat-and-mouse structure Collins does not use. Fast and cinematic, and pitched at the same teen audience.
- An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
- Shares The Hunger Games' central horror of a regime that turns its young people into weapons and puts them through deadly contests: Elias is forced into the empire's Trials while Laia spies for the resistance. The Rome-inspired setting makes it fantasy rather than dystopia, and it is harsher. Best for 15 and up because of torture and threats of sexual violence.
- Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
- Built around a deadly competition staged by a tyrant king, with a young prisoner fighting for her freedom, so the Games comparison is direct. Celaena is a trained assassin rather than a reluctant survivor, and the series grows from a tournament story into sprawling epic fantasy with heavy romance. Later books include sexual content better suited to older readers.
What to Read After The Hunger Games
If you just want more Panem, Sunrise on the Reaping takes you back to Haymitch's own Games, and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes tells Snow's story decades earlier. If the arena was what gripped you, with its alliances, traps and the constant sense of being watched, The Maze Runner and Throne of Glass are the most direct matches, one a science fiction survival puzzle and the other a fantasy tournament. Ender's Game turns the idea of training children for combat into a strategic, cerebral story. If the political oppression and the spark of rebellion mattered more, Legend and Red Queen both put teenagers at the center of a revolt against an unjust state.
If it was Katniss herself, a capable young woman pushed into a system she did not choose, Divergent is the closest successor, while An Ember in the Ashes trades the arena for a brutal military academy and two alternating narrators. If you were drawn to the questions the book raises about control, spectacle and what a society will sacrifice for stability, The Giver is the short, thoughtful forerunner of the modern YA dystopia. It has no arena at all, but its central idea is just as unsettling.
Age and Intensity Guide
The Hunger Games sits toward the intense end of YA: frequent violence and the deaths of children, but nothing sexually explicit. The Giver is the gentlest pick and is commonly taught in middle school. The Maze Runner, Legend and Red Queen are pitched at roughly the same teen audience as Collins, and Divergent is close behind but includes a suicide and an attempted sexual assault. All four open longer series, so a reader who connects with one has several more volumes ahead.
Three picks suit readers 15 and up. An Ember in the Ashes includes torture and threats of sexual violence. The first Throne of Glass book is comparatively restrained, but later books in the series include sexual content and grow increasingly adult. Ender's Game was published as adult science fiction and contains violent fights between children, though it has long been read by teenagers. For households sharing books across a wide age range, The Giver and The Maze Runner are the easiest picks to pass between younger and older readers.