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I really, really, really wanted to like this book. "The Giver" is one of my all time favorites, the story was just so poignant, moving, and left so much room for independent thought and interpretation. I also enjoyed "Gathering Blue" and while I was sort of underwhelmed by "Messenger" I enjoyed seeing the three protagonists of the books come together to vanquish evil through the giving of one of their own lives. It satisfied me as an end to this loosely tied together trilogy and then this book comes out of nowhere and all I'm asking is "WHY?!"

Beware spoilers ahead
(view spoiler)[ My first and biggest problem with this book is that the first half is basically just "The Giver" rehashed from another perspective. I understand that Lowry was trying to create a book that could stand alone, therefore necessitating the reiteration of some things that fans of the series would find redundant, but the problem was that even though Lowry included these things so it could work as a stand alone I felt like she was assuming her readers wouldn't be reading it as a stand alone, so these reiterations were poorly written, boring, and with a lackluster prose that made me feel as if I was reading some bad fan fiction for "The Giver". The one thing I did like was getting to know more about Birthmothers, I didn't give them much thought originally but that really would be a traumatizing assignment.
The best part of the book is the middle in which Claire resides in a community readers have not been exposed to before. The characters here feel more real than any others in the book. Lame Einar rocked my socks, unfortunately this part of the book makes up only a small portion of the story. Which brings us to the last part of the book which takes place in the same community as "Messenger" where Claire is randomly old, everything is rushed, poorly thought out, and haphazardly tied up with an awkward bow. Yeah, I'm looking at you Jonas, who is now randomly married to Kira, who sends Gabriel to vanquish evil, which I was under the impression we already vanquished, in the simplest most unimaginative way possible, which magically makes Claire young again and everyone is happy.... O_o (hide spoiler)]

In conclusion this was a rather uninspired end to these stories. Personally, I will pretend this book doesn't exist.