The issue lies, I believe, in a flawed understanding of selflessness and sacrificial love on the part of the author. And maybe because she does depict them being in love and the you see what I think is a more likely situation: they wouldn’t necessarily be in love but more likely bonded by their trauma. Well, at the very least in the book.

It wouldn’t change much whether they were male or female as I see it, to answer another comment here

To sum it up, I think hunger games are the kinds of books that are fun, but fall into some of these excesses of sentimentality without which they could’ve been a pretty damn good