The Hunger Games

If what you want back is the arena's uneasy arithmetic—who might help, who might turn on you, and what a frightened teenager can do with limited supplies—start with The Testing. Cia Vale is chosen for a government program that promises university and a future rebuilding a damaged country. The tests are deadly, and her father's warning to trust no one complicates every alliance. Like Katniss, Cia has to think past the task immediately in front of her and ask what the authorities gain from it. The setting is an exam rather than a televised spectacle, so the suspense comes from hidden rules as much as physical danger.

Thomas arrives in the Glade with almost no memory, surrounded by other boys and a maze whose walls move. The immediate question is as simple as Katniss's in the arena: how do you stay alive long enough to find a way out? Both books make young people improvise under conditions designed by someone they cannot see, then slowly widen the question to who built the danger. The Maze Runner has more puzzle solving and group coordination than the Games' public performance and political symbolism. If the Cornucopia scramble and the search for safe ground were your favorite parts of The Hunger Games, this is the closest kind of momentum on the list.

Panem sorts people by district and then turns two children from each into a national lesson. Divergent uses a different sorting machine: five factions organized around virtues, with Beatrice Prior asked to choose where she belongs. Her choice leads to dangerous initiation trials, but the deeper trouble is that she does not fit the categories the city depends on. That makes this a good next read if Katniss's refusal to play the role assigned to her mattered more than the survival tactics alone. It has a strong YA romance thread and a quicker move into faction politics. There is no single televised death arena to replace Collins's central device.

This is the most literal match for the Games' terrible setup: a class of students is taken to an island, armed, and ordered by an authoritarian program to kill until one remains. Friendship becomes a practical risk when the rules reward betrayal. That pressure makes a sharp comparison with Katniss's alliances, especially her refusal to treat every other tribute as an enemy. Expect a much harsher, more graphic thriller than Collins's YA novel, with violence close to the surface and less room for the larger rebellion to develop. VIZ publishes it as a novel; some similarly titled Open Library records are manga volumes, so check the edition if you want Takami's prose story.

Katniss sees the Capitol's power from a poor district. Legend lets you see a divided state from both sides at once: June is a celebrated military prodigy, while Day, raised in the slums, is the Republic's most wanted criminal. Their pursuit brings the government's story about itself under pressure. The alternating viewpoints make the class divide more explicit than Katniss's single perspective, and the chase takes the place of an arena. Choose it for the part of The Hunger Games where survival begins to turn into resistance: a young person discovers that official rules protect the people who wrote them, and then has to decide whom to believe.