Books like The Giver
What should you read after Lois Lowry’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Lois Lowry
- 2014
- 257 pages
- Dystopian fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Giver
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall match1984
George Orwell
The adult version of Jonas's discovery: a man who learns his society edits memory itself, and what it costs to hold onto a true one.
- Inherited memories
- A child given the truth
- Sameness as safety
- Adult, and genuinely brutal
Great matchBrave New World
Aldous Huxley
A whole civilisation that traded depth for comfort, exactly as Jonas's community did, with the trade laid out as an argument rather than a boy's discovery.
- Sameness as safety
- A community without colour
- A child given the truth
- Sexual content, adult framing
Great matchFahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
One man carrying what everyone else agreed to forget, and an old mentor who helps him understand it. The Giver's central relationship, for grown-ups.
- Inherited memories
- An old mentor
- A community without colour
- Feverish, poetic style
Worth a look — with a warningThe Maze Runner
James Dashner
Adults hiding the design of a world from the children inside it. The reveal instinct matches; nothing else does, and it is far more interested in running.
- A child given the truth
- Sameness as safety
- No thematic depth
Great matchDivergent
Veronica Roth
A society that sorts its children at sixteen and quietly removes anyone who won't fit a category. Jonas's Ceremony of Twelve, expanded into a thriller.
- Sameness as safety
- A child given the truth
- Action-driven, less reflective
Great matchThe Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
Another twelve-year-old learning what the adults around her have been agreeing to. Louder than Lowry, with the same clear moral eye.
- A child given the truth
- Sameness as safety
- Violent, children die
Great matchThe Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
A regime that assigns roles, renames people and calls the result safety. Atwood writes the adult horror underneath Lowry's calm surface.
- Sameness as safety
- Inherited memories
- Adult, sexually explicit
Great matchEnder's Game
Orson Scott Card
A gifted child selected for a role, isolated by it, and told the truth far too late. The burden-of-being-chosen half of The Giver.
- A child given the truth
- An old mentor
- Military setting, real violence
Great matchUglies
Scott Westerfeld
Everyone gets the same face at sixteen and is happier for it. Westerfeld takes Lowry's sameness and makes it something teenagers actively want.
- A community without colour
- Sameness as safety
- YA romance subplot
Best for the ambiguous endingNever Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
Children raised inside a kindly institution that has already decided what they are for, told by someone who never quite rebels. Devastating, and quiet about it.
- An ambiguous ending
- A child given the truth
- Sameness as safety
- Adult and very sad
Great matchThe City of Ember
Jeanne DuPrau
Two children discover their entire town was built as a temporary arrangement and its instructions have been lost. The most direct kid-lit companion to Lowry.
- A child given the truth
- A community without colour
- An ambiguous ending
- Adventure over philosophy
Worth a look — with a warningThe Road
Cormac McCarthy
The world outside Elsewhere, if you want it: a boy and his father in a landscape with no colour and no community left to protect them.
- A community without colour
- An old mentor
- An ambiguous ending
- About as bleak as fiction gets
Worth a look — with a warningThe Selection
Kiera Cass
On this list because of the caste backdrop only. It is a romance in a palace, and it asks none of the questions Lowry does.
- Sameness as safety
- A child given the truth
- No thematic ambition
What should you read after The Giver?
The Giver by Lois Lowry works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is 1984 by George Orwell — the adult version of Jonas's discovery: a man who learns his society edits memory itself, and what it costs to hold onto a true one.
If what stayed with you was sameness as safety, read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley instead: a whole civilisation that traded depth for comfort, exactly as Jonas's community did, with the trade laid out as an argument rather than a boy's discovery. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is the other strong option — one man carrying what everyone else agreed to forget, and an old mentor who helps him understand it. The Giver's central relationship, for grown-ups.
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