Revisiting the world of "The Giver"

Remember when you read The Giver (P.S. If you haven't caught on, you can click these links I keep posting and see past book reviews and such :) ) in middle school? If you didn't, you missed out, much like me, until I finally discovered it last year and loved it! And now with the movie coming out in August, I figured it was as good a time as any to continue with Lois Lowry's "Giver Quartet". (I read book #2, Gathering Blue, about a year ago). So I recently read book #3, Messenger.

I was a little confused when I first decided to read it, trying to figure out if I should reread books #1 and #2 first. I've heard the four books (The last one is Son, which I also plan to read!) referred to as a series, as "companion novels", and a whole host of other things, and I wasn't sure if I could read book #3 without a strong recollection of what happened in the other two. Spoiler alert: you can! There are a few characters from book #2 (Gathering Blue) that reappear in Messenger, but even without remembering much about them, I was still able to enjoy and comprehend the book. I would suggest reading them all, and in order, if possible, but they can still be enjoyed as standalone books.

Messenger takes place in the same "world" I suppose you can say, as the previous two novels. It is about Matty, a boy who lives in a utopia simply called "Village". People come to Village to escape their horrific old towns and lives, and are happily taken in by the residents. Matty followed this journey, as did the father figure that he lives with, referred to as "the blind man" or "Seer", as he sees more than anyone else with physical sight, though he lacks that.

Everything is going well, until the utopia starts to fail, as most do in literature. Some of the residents have been "trading" for materialistic items...but trading what? And the trading seems to get more mysterious and odd as people start to change, and may be trading parts of themselves. And what's worse, many of the residents of Village are pushing to have the community closed to any newcomers. Matty and Seer, along with a minority of others are deeply concerned about this, and Matty is sent on a dangerous journey to try to reach an old friend before Village closes its doors, or worse.

This book, like the others in the quartet, is very short (less than 200 pages), so it's a nice quick read, fast-paced and intriguing. I was hooked by the mystery of the Village residents, and of the dangerous Forest that lies between Matty and his friend. The themes in the book will easily resonate not just with young readers, but adults as well, as you consider what you might give up in order to obtain something else, and think about fairness and community. The book was up to the standard of its predecessors, and I'm excited to read the final book in the series!