Actual Rating: 3.5 
 I have pretty mixed feelings about this book. 
 On the surface, I enjoyed this book. The appearances of Kira and Jonas (who is now Leader of Village) were a special treat to me. I felt it kind of odd that there was such a huge timeskip and now Kira and Jonas were 18 or older and now Matty, the little boy we knew from Gathering Blue, is now a lot more mature. 
 Even though I marked this book as "action-adventure", it really isn't except for the ending. I felt it was a good breather from all the action dystopians that seemed to be lurking everywhere in YA: such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, Legend, I could go on. There are so many action-filled dystopians that sometimes I felt like it was just a little too much, and this book at least made me hopeful that there were still dystopians out there that didn't center completely on action. 
 But there are quite a few issues with Messenger as well. 
 First of all, I felt like the ending was kind of rushed. The book is wrapped up in a whole, what, 5 or so pages? Maybe Lois Lowry was hurrying on either her planning or the writing itself, but I wasn't that satisfied by the ending. Still, it left me speechless. 
 It's a pretty open-ended ending and we're left to wonder about what happened to our main characters. Also, it takes quite a turn from what you predict is going to happen. It was rather hectic, even though it didn't leave me that satisfied from it. Still, the ending was one of the scenes with the most action I've seen from Lowry yet. 
 Also, I found it aggravating how Kira was never mentioned by name until around page 100, which is over halfway through the book. But she plays such a huge role in the book in the later part of it. She's 75% of the reason Matty goes into Forest at the end of the book! 
 Nevertheless, I think the book was pretty well-rounded overall. The characters were pretty good, although there were a lot of background ones. Jean, Ramon (is that what his name is? I don't know, his name just reminds me of Ramen noodles), Mentor, Seer, etc. Although I did find the names in Village a bit annoying, and also had a lack of originality. I mean, you just state what the person/place/thing is, capitalize the first letter, and call it a name of a place? I mean, the names in Village (see?) don't even have a 'the' in front of them! At least make them original. Like, instead of Schoolhouse, you could do "The Village School". Or you could even give them nicknames that Matty gave them! 
 And don't give me that "but Village has true names and stuff for their citizens" argument. I feel like that's just an excuse. I guess Lowry's creative sources were exhausted. 
 Anyway, I feel like the book was pretty good in general. There weren't many plot twists, but I'm fine with that. I'm looking forward to seeing how this quartet finally wraps up and looking forward to more of the "gifts" that are displayed. Maybe we'll have a person who can see backwards! 
 (No, really, that would be super cool. Like, you could time travel or something. How awesome would that be?.) 
 SERIES REVIEWS: 
 My review of Gathering Blue 
 AUTHOR REVIEWS: 
 My review of Number the Stars