I read The Giver and quite liked it. It seemed more nuanced than a lot of YA stuff. When I read Gathering Blue and Messenger, my interest flagged, but I picked up Son both for closure and because I thought it a great ending might redeem the whole series. 
 I was disappointed. 
 It's not an awful book, it just irritated me. First there was the training montage during which I had the Rocky theme song running through my head on repeat, followed by the interminably climb. Then there were little inconsistencies that annoyed me, like Claire realizing that she "loved" Gabe even though in The Giver, it wasn't until Jonas received it from the Giver that he---and presumably any member of the community---had any concept of love, much less knowledge of the word. It would have made sense if this scene had happened after Jonas had left the community and the memories had been released, but this was before. Maybe Lowry's point is that people in the community didn't really need the memories to feel the feelings, but then, why did it take so long for anyone to have any and do anything about it? And really, based on the rest of the book and the way the messages are hammered home, if that had been her intention, I'm sure I would know it and not just be speculating about it. 
 Then when Claire and Jonas meet up later, Jonas asks about when Claire stopped taking the pills, but earlier in the book, there was this big thing about how Claire never took the pills. She hadn't started before she went off to be a Birthmother and somehow she'd never been given pills after she gave birth. 
 I find this kind of thing irritating. If an author (and/or her editor) isn't going to put the time and effort into internal consistency, why should I give my time and effort to read the book? But of course I did read the book, and since I can't get that time back, I feel like I just got a bum deal from Trademaster. 
 My daughter seems to have lost steam after Gathering Blue, and I'm not going to encourage her to keep going. I'm really bad about quitting books that aren't doing it for me; it's not too early for her to learn the importance of knowing when to cut your literary losses.