“Destroying things is much easier than making them.”
Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games is one of the most significant dystopian young adult franchises in the world. Whether it be through the original book series or its adaptation on the big screen, it follows the story of Katniss Everdeen, a girl from the poorest district of Panem who is chosen to compete in the annual Hunger Games, a tournament where 22 people from the city’s twelve districts fight to the death. With its legacy and influence still going strong to this day, join us here at What We Reading as we run you through some of the best dystopian books like The Hunger Games for fans to sink their teeth into!
The Maze Runner – James Dashner
No list of books like The Hunger Games would be complete without a mention of James Dashner’s The Maze Runner. This dystopian young adult story follows a boy named Thomas who wakes up one day to find himself in the Glade. The Glade is a walled-in prison guarded by an enormous maze.
Every day, Thomas and the other young boys around him have the opportunity to escape the Glade by venturing out into the maze. However, violent and dangerous creatures patrol the grounds, claiming the lives of plenty of Thomas’ predecessors over the past two years. For readers who loved Hunger Games’ premise of young people being enclosed in an arena and forced to fight for survival, The Maze Runner is the perfect go-to!
Divergent – Veronica Roth
Another young adult novel that was propelled to superstardom thanks to a big Hollywood adaptation, Veronica Roth’s Divergent is set in a dystopian future where humanity has been segregated into five different groups. Ranging from their intelligence to their bravery, every child goes through a test on their 16th birthday designed to show which of these groups they should spend the rest of their life with.
Beatrice Prior has been put into the Abnegation group but makes the fateful decision to turn her back on her family and join Dauntless, the group for the brave. For those looking for a book that follows a cast of young adults taking on the system like in The Hunger Games, Divergent is still a must-read.
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#MurderTrending – Gretchen McNeil
Also, touching on The Hunger Games’ themes of law and order being made into a spectacle, #MurderTrending is a dystopian thriller novel by Gretchen McNeil. The book introduces a near-future scenario where criminals are executed via live stream for the whole world to gawp at. These executions have proven to be a viral hit online, with clips being shared across social media.
Readers follow seventeen-year-old Dee Guerrera, who wakes up in an abandoned warehouse, realising she is next in line to be executed. Forming the Death Row Breakfast Club, readers follow Dee as she and her friends struggle to prove her innocence in a desperate bid for survival.
The 5th Wave – Rick Yancey
A Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction (2013), Rick Yancey’s The 5th Wave is a dystopian thriller set in the aftermath of an alien invasion. Following four separate waves of alien invasions, little remains of humanity. In this reality, the aliens look just like humans, leading to no one knowing how many people actually remain and paranoia and violence running rife.
Readers follow Cassie on a lonely stretch of highway as she attempts to evade Them, the beings that roam the countryside slaughtering whoever they find. She is used to life on the run until she meets the enigmatic and mysterious Evan Walker, who threatens to shatter everything she thought she knew about surviving in this world.
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S.T.A.G.S – M.A. Bennett
M.A. Bennett’s S.T.A.G.S is set in the illustrious English boarding school, St. Aidan the Great. Readers follow scholarship student, Greer Macdonald, a young woman who struggles to fit in due to her ordinary background. She receives an invite to spend the half term at Longcross Hall, a grand estate for a weekend of hunting, fishing and shooting.
But, it soon becomes clear that she and her other misfits are the intended prey. A thrilling story of survival, S.T.A.G.S is the perfect book for fans of The Hunger Games due to its young adult cast of characters as well as its commentary on the gentrified elite exploiting the poorer masses.
The 100 – Kass Morgan
The 100 is set in a dystopian future where the Earth has become inhabitable due to the outbreak of a nuclear war. What remains of humanity now lives on a spaceship floating just above the Earth’s atmosphere. Resources are sparse, however, and the ship’s leaders are plotting a return to the planet.
Not knowing how radioactive the surface still is, they send down a hundred young delinquents as a test to see whether there’s any chance of moving back down. The comparisons to The Hunger Games come from the large group of young adults being put in a life-or-death challenge from a powerful organisation, and Morgan does a stellar job in creating an action-packed story that more than delivers the shocks.
Legend – Marie Lu
For those who loved the dystopian feel of Panem being controlled by a violent military, Marie Lu offers the perfect book to turn to. In Legend, Lu presents a North America in the future that has been divided between rich and poor.
Children are made to sit a test that will determine which side of the fence they land on, with the rich being allowed to enrol in the military, and the poor having to live the rest of their lives in labour camps across the country. Readers follow two young adults living at opposite ends of this spectrum as their lives become intertwined, and the journey they go on quickly begins to expose the dark truths lurking underneath the surface of this society.
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
