I experienced a similar frustration. Somewhere around middle school I noticed a significant drop in my reading speed as well as doubling back to reread sentences to make sure I understood them.
I gradually came to the realization that younger me was a faster reader because I didn’t get bogged down on minor details. I was surprised when I found out that I had mentally misread a character’s name from a children’s book series I used to read voraciously. My slower reading came with better recall and attention to specifics, but a decline in my enjoyment of reading.
So I started adopting a “movie theater” approach. If you mishear or feel confused about a detail in a movie theater, it’s not like you can just get up and rewind. You kind of have to roll with it. Now I’m convinced that is exactly what I was doing as a kid because I’m reading so much faster and enjoying it just as much as I used to.
I honestly feel like I would’ve enjoyed The Hunger Games in high school more if at the time it came out I hadn’t already read so much of the “beautiful snarky badass female lead with boy trouble” in YA at that age. My first exposure to it was Max from Maximum Ride. Then Katsa from Graceling. And so on and so forth. I kinda grew disenchanted with that archetype and found myself liking them less and less as I got older. It’s part of the reason I never finished the Throne of Glass series.
It also seemed like the marketing for the first movie really played up the male actors and Gale vs. Peeta love triangle, and that trickled over into the discourse surrounding the books. The boys and romance seemed to be the first thing all of the girls I knew reading it talked about. Not so much Katniss herself.
I definitely want to give it a reread now that it’s been several years and I can approach it with a new perspective.