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** spoiler alert ** This is not The Giver.

Granted, we all know this. I've read Gathering Blue, which I really enjoyed, and must have been living on another planet to not know there had been a third book in all of this (which I will read). So, with a grain of salt of not having read that book, I continue with my impression.

Once I realized that Claire is not before or after The Giver, but concurrent, my fascination only grew. I have not read the first book since probably gradeschool, with maybe one reread, but all of its details stuck with me a long time (it's actually a book I got my fiance to read when we first started dating, long after I had ever read the book). So, again, it's fascinating to see another perspective on the community. However, the transition from Part I to Part II is, well... cheap. A few uttered lines of "OMG, Claire escapes on the boat, falls into the water, and loses all her memory" seems like a cheap plot device Lowry hasn't used in other books.

So, in Part II, as you see the obvious build to a romance between Claire and Einar, the "memory" issues seem just as cheap. You think you'll get a bit more complexity of the backstories of Einar and Alys, but you only get a sparse amount from Einar at the end... and that's where I really started to go, "Seriously?"

I'm sorry, since I know Book #3 is supposedly dealing with evil, and it supposed to be great, and I haven't read it... so I'm only going to assume the "Trademaster" trope (yes, I said trope: evil as human/Satan in human form/Mephistopheles making trades... it's a pretty well used plot device) is covered quite a bit there.

Because it seemed like it came out of left field here. Why does he hover at the top of the cliff? Why do "gambling machines" need to be outlawed in the new community...? Smacks a little bit of Puritanism to me.

And really... Jonas and Kira get together and have a family? That's adorable and all, but is just too... easy. That's what I loved about The Giver and Gathering Blue... they weren't easy. There were beautiful cliffhangers, unanswered threads, and open endings. This book just lacked all of that... hell, I was expecting a whole-footed Einar to come running over to Claire and Gabe at the end of this book (and frankly, I might have been okay with that, since Einar was one of my favorites).

Also... the "gifts"? I feel like they were a bit too implied as "super powers," particularly when Gabe had one that was essentially Bran's in the A Song of Ice and Fire books... a.k.a, borderline human possession. It's not quite possession... but it seems more like "empathy." Just like Kira's "Gift" always struck me just as... talent. I don't know quite what I'm trying to say here, other than the "Gift" aspect seems oddly noted here, as opposed to Gathering Blue, where there it seemed less like a "power" than a "natural ability in places where sameness was preferred."

I don't know... I read other reviews prior to writing this, and it seems lots of other people have a similar "not sure how to say it" reaction to this book. I enjoyed it; it was easy to get through. But I had virtually none of the complexities of feeling, questions, etc. that I had from the first two books (and seems like I may have from the third book). It felt a little like the Deathly Hallows epilogue, which many fans agree: was not needed, and almost detracted from the "world" of the books. Not to mention, Lowry's writing seems much more wooden and simplistic here as compared to the other two books I read in the series, and this may be because of the implications of Claire's low intelligence...?

So, I have Messenger on hold now at my library; I realize that Matthew is the protagonist of that book, though even without reading it, I'm thinking his death/scant coverage in the fourth book seems cheap, yet again. However, consider this review "subject to change."