REVIEW: THE GIVER by Lois Lowry

Title: The Giver

Author: Lois Lowry
Series: The Giver Quartet #1
Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Academic, Dystopia, YA
Publisher: Ember
Source: Audiobook
Pages:180


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BLURB:
This haunting story centers on Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he's given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.

 

I learned about this book while watching a TBR video of YouTuber Katytastic, and somehow the cover of the book just captured my eye and for a long time I couldn't shake the feeling that I need to read this book just because of the cover, because I find it to be haunting a little. So going into this book I actually didn't have any expectations.

 

THE WORLD: The world in this book is dystorian. The plot takes place in so called Community, where the time has stopped and everything became Sameness. Sameness is what we would now understand as 21 century. The inhabitants of Community basically live exactly the same life. They have no memories of time before Sameness, they see no color, they know no climate changes nothing, no pain, no fear, no hate or love. You need to apply to get assigned a house, you need to apply to get married, you need to apply to get a child, but only after three years of being married. Even what you do is decided, because each year there is a ceremony called Twelve upcoming, where twelve kids are given their job they will need to work for their entire lives. Each weak member of the Community has to leave Sameness to Elsewhere, because they simply are too different to everyone else in their community. I have to say I really did enjoy learning about this utopian, dystorian world and kind of thought that not seeing colors or not being able to remember anything would be just heartbreaking. However, the idea itself was interesting. 

CHARACTERS: The mane character in the book is a boy named Jonas. He is curious, he likes to live by the rules and get his job and work just like his parents are doing (I say parents because he was assigned to live with these people). He also has a sister Lily. At his ceremony of Twelve Upcoming, he is given the ultimate honor of becoming the next Receiver of Memories before Sameness, which basically means that he will receiver all memories that are left about the world before their time, about wars and hate, and killings and all the bad things that happened in the world, together with all the good things that happened. I liked Jonas, he wasn't annoying to read. We also have his best friends Fiona and Asher, these two character don't really play much a role in the first book. Also Jonas parents played quite a huge role in the book which I actually liked. I enjoyed seeing how a family of people who were kind of assigned to one another acted around each other. It was interesting to read. Then there is Chief Elder who basically takes the role of the president of the community and makes all the decisions, and of course there is the Giver. The Giver is a community member who previously received all the memories, so in other words when the next person would be assigned Jonas himself would also become the Giver. The Giver's character in this book was good, he really took the role of a mentor for Jonas and I enjoyed their chapters together. 

LOVE: There isn't really much love in this book. You understand that in the sequels Jonas and Fiona might have something but it doesn't happen in this book. 

PLUS: I liked the world that was created for this book. It's really simple, there are no over the top unnecessary things. I liked the plot, the main idea of the book, stating that yes a world without hate and pain is a nice idea however that would also take love and peace from us as well. I liked the twist as well.

MINUS: This book was too short, not because it was just so good that I just wanted it to never stop, no. I feel that it could have been longer because the pace of it was too fast. I wanted more explanation why Community became the way it was, I wanted more time between Jonas and the Giver, I wanted more explanation, more details and more everything! This book was too short and a little predictable. 

OVERALL: I really did enjoy this one. I didn't think that I would like dystopian novels but as it turns out I do like them. I am definitely recommending this book to everyone and continuing to read the next books.

 

What did you think of THE GIVER?