Is there an audiobook of Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2)?

Yes. Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Katherine Borowitz.

How long is the Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) audiobook?

The Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) audiobook runs 5 hr 27 min.

Is Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) on Kindle Unlimited?

Yes. Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) was included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 16, 2026.

Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) by Lois Lowry book cover for the Book of the Day young adult book review

Our score

4.4/ 5

Excellent

Listen to Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDSeptember 2000

Genres

Fiction Young Adult Dystopian

Themes

Who a broken society decides is worth keeping aliveArt and craft as both a survival tool and a form of controlTradition used to disguise exploitationThe gap between comfort-based and poverty-based forms of oppression

Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2)

Name: Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2)
Price: 12.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry follows The Giver with Gathering Blue, a slower, harder dystopia about an orphaned, disabled girl whose gift for weaving thread into story might be the only thing keeping her alive in a village that discards anyone it sees as broken.

The Review

Our take

Reading Gathering Blue feels nothing like reading The Giver, and that's the first thing worth saying about it. Where the earlier book moved through a controlled, orderly world with the calm of someone describing a machine, this one drops you into mud, hunger, and a village that treats cruelty as simple efficiency. Kira has a twisted leg and a dead mother, two facts that should get her left in a field to die by the story's own logic. Instead she gets summoned before the Council of Guardians, and Lowry spends the opening chapters letting you feel exactly how precarious that reprieve is, because nobody explains why she's been spared, least of all Kira.

The world-building here works through scarcity rather than lore-dumping, which is the smartest choice in the book. You learn the rules of this society by watching what it does to its weakest members, not through a council member monologuing about history. Kira's actual gift, the thing that saves her, is her skill dyeing and weaving thread, and Lowry turns that into the engine of the plot: she's set to work restoring a ceremonial robe that depicts the entire history of her people, one panel at a time, and the mystery of what that robe is really for, and why nobody threading it before her stayed healthy for long, carries the book's tension. It's a quieter kind of stakes than a chase or a battle, but it works, because every answer Kira gets about her village raises a worse question about what it's hiding.

The pacing is unhurried by design and some readers used to faster YA will feel that stretch, especially in the middle third where Kira mostly observes and waits rather than acts. But Lowry uses that patience to build real dread around small details: a boy who talks to no one, a room nobody's allowed to enter, the way the villagers avoid Kira's eyes. The prose itself is spare, almost fable-like, closer to a folk tale than a novel with modern pacing, which fits a story about a girl whose entire value to her community gets measured through the things her hands can make.

What makes this a genuine companion to The Giver rather than a retread is how differently the two books think about control. Jonas's world hid its cruelty behind comfort and precision. Kira's hides its cruelty behind poverty and superstition, dressing exploitation up as tradition and calling the arrangement a kindness. That's a sharper, angrier target for a book pitched at young readers, and Lowry doesn't blink at it. The ending doesn't resolve everything, it opens a door rather than closing one, and if you've read the rest of the quartet you already know Kira's choice at the close is the seed of everything that follows in Messenger and Son.

Why you should read

Readers who loved The Giver and want a stranger, sadder companion
Fans of quiet dystopias built on scarcity rather than technology
Anyone drawn to disabled protagonists whose value isn't measured by strength
Readers who like ambiguous endings that seed a larger series

What to expect

A slower, fable-like pace with real patience required in the middle
Spare, folk-tale prose rather than fast contemporary YA rhythms
World-building revealed through scarcity and small cruelty, not exposition
An open ending that sets up the rest of the Giver Quartet

For a book barely over two hundred pages, Gathering Blue asks a lot of its readers: patience with a slow build, comfort with ambiguity, willingness to sit with a protagonist who has less power than almost anyone around her. What it gives back is a fable about who gets to be useful in a broken system, and who gets discarded before anyone bothers to ask.

Reviewed by Rowan · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.4/ 5

Excellent

Listen to Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Included with Kindle Unlimited Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2)?: Yes. Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Katherine Borowitz.
Listen to Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) audiobook?: The Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) audiobook runs 5 hr 27 min.
Is Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) on Kindle Unlimited?: Yes. Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) was included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 16, 2026.
How much does Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $12.99, Paperback $7.48, Hardcover $15.40. Prices as of August 21, 2026 at 3:47 AM EDT and may change.

Filed underYoung Adult Dystopian Browse the archive →

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More by Lois LowrySee every Lois Lowry book we've reviewed, with our scores.All Lois Lowry books →

Common questions

What is Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) about?: Reading Gathering Blue feels nothing like reading The Giver, and that's the first thing worth saying about it. Where the earlier book moved through a controlled, orderly world with the calm of someone describing a machine, this one drops you into mud, hunger, and a village that treats cruelty as…
Is Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) worth reading?: We scored Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet, Book 2) 4.4 out of 5. Lois Lowry follows The Giver with Gathering Blue, a slower, harder dystopia about an orphaned, disabled girl whose gift for weaving thread into story might be the only thing keeping her alive in a village that discards anyone it sees as broken.