Son by Lois Lowry

I rate this YA novel 4.5 out of 5

Clare is a vessel and she makes the product. She doesn't ask questions. Life is easy this way. She is content. But then something goes wrong and the product is cut from her. She is left with a scar and dismissed from her place as Birthmother. But what's more, she is left with a gaping hole that only the product seemed to feel. No, not the product, her son. Clare can't fit back into the perfectly constructed life of the community and as she grows closer to her child she realizes she might not want to. 

Written in the same world of The Giver, Gathering Blue, and The Messenger, this novel is the final installment of the series. Lowry writes with the same simple gravity and arresting detail as her previous books. It took the first two sentences of this novel to get me hooked. It would be hard to speak too much about this novel without giving things away, but I will say it is highly worth the read and that you run into old characters as well as meet new ones. 
                                            Spoiler Alert - Proceed With Caution

The only thing about Son that I didn't like was the choppiness of the narration. In her previous novels she stays from one point of view and tells the story from there and it works for her. There were multiple points of narration in this end-cap novel and it just didn't flow for me. I felt Lowry was trying to tell more story creatively, but I was left with more questions instead. The sectioning off of the story was also something that further made the story choppy feeling. 

I still highly recommend reading it, but I have to say that I was most attached to the story in the beginning section. Overall, though still good, it did not reach the esteem of The Giver or Gathering Blue, at least in my mind.