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Building 903
Not yet published
Expected 8 Oct 26In the tradition of her bestselling, award-winning phenomenon, The Giver, Lois Lowry delivers a story about censorship, comfort, complicity, and the radical power of books to open portals and unlock our humanity through our most powerful the imagination.
Twins Tessa and Theo live in a world ruled by the tyrannical Koziris, where there are no dangers or rebels… or so they've been told. In this world, citizens live long lives, and while many hate Koziris, they are comfortable and safe. So, when Tessa's brother disappears, nobody wants to discuss it. But then Miriam, their 135-year-old neighbor, slips Tessa a key – not only to her brother's disappearance, but to the source of all real magic … books.
As Tessa and her parents begin their search for Theo, Tessa learns that books not only tell us stories – they open portals and unlock our humanity through our most powerful the imagination. Once that truth has been revealed, Tessa won't be able to rest until she has retrieved her twin and society itself has been transformed.
Two-time Newbery-winner Lois Lowry has crafted a narrative that feels at once prescient and in this world, the imagination is the revolution. Not only does Building 903 sit in the same resonant space as The Giver Quartet, but it is also a profound addition to Lois's enduring body of work – and a testament to the strength and value of her voice, vision, and legacy.
Twins Tessa and Theo live in a world ruled by the tyrannical Koziris, where there are no dangers or rebels… or so they've been told. In this world, citizens live long lives, and while many hate Koziris, they are comfortable and safe. So, when Tessa's brother disappears, nobody wants to discuss it. But then Miriam, their 135-year-old neighbor, slips Tessa a key – not only to her brother's disappearance, but to the source of all real magic … books.
As Tessa and her parents begin their search for Theo, Tessa learns that books not only tell us stories – they open portals and unlock our humanity through our most powerful the imagination. Once that truth has been revealed, Tessa won't be able to rest until she has retrieved her twin and society itself has been transformed.
Two-time Newbery-winner Lois Lowry has crafted a narrative that feels at once prescient and in this world, the imagination is the revolution. Not only does Building 903 sit in the same resonant space as The Giver Quartet, but it is also a profound addition to Lois's enduring body of work – and a testament to the strength and value of her voice, vision, and legacy.
232 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 29, 2026
About the author
Lois Lowry
192 books23.5k followersTaken from Lowry's website:
"I’ve always felt that I was fortunate to have been born the middle child of three. My older sister, Helen, was very much like our mother: gentle, family-oriented, eager to please. Little brother Jon was the only boy and had interests that he shared with Dad; together they were always working on electric trains and erector sets; and later, when Jon was older, they always seemed to have their heads under the raised hood of a car. That left me in-between, and exactly where I wanted most to be: on my own. I was a solitary child who lived in the world of books and my own vivid imagination.
Because my father was a career military officer - an Army dentist - I lived all over the world. I was born in Hawaii, moved from there to New York, spent the years of World War II in my mother’s hometown: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and from there went to Tokyo when I was eleven. High school was back in New York City, but by the time I went to college (Brown University in Rhode Island), my family was living in Washington, D.C.
I married young. I had just turned nineteen - just finished my sophomore year in college - when I married a Naval officer and continued the odyssey that military life requires. California. Connecticut (a daughter born there). Florida (a son). South Carolina. Finally Cambridge, Massachusetts, when my husband left the service and entered Harvard Law School (another daughter; another son) and then to Maine - by now with four children under the age of five in tow. My children grew up in Maine. So did I. I returned to college at the University of Southern Maine, got my degree, went to graduate school, and finally began to write professionally, the thing I had dreamed of doing since those childhood years when I had endlessly scribbled stories and poems in notebooks.
After my marriage ended in 1977, when I was forty, I settled into the life I have lived ever since. Today I am back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, living and writing in a house dominated by a very shaggy Tibetan Terrier named Bandit. For a change of scenery Martin and I spend time in Maine, where we have an old (it was built in 1768!) farmhouse on top of a hill. In Maine I garden, feed birds, entertain friends, and read...
My books have varied in content and style. Yet it seems that all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections. A Summer to Die, my first book, was a highly fictionalized retelling of the early death of my sister, and of the effect of such a loss on a family. Number the Stars, set in a different culture and era, tells the same story: that of the role that we humans play in the lives of our fellow beings.
The Giver - and Gathering Blue, and the newest in the trilogy: Messenger - take place against the background of very different cultures and times. Though all three are broader in scope than my earlier books, they nonetheless speak to the same concern: the vital need of people to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment.
My older son was a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. His death in the cockpit of a warplane tore away a piece of my world. But it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth.
I am a grandmother now. For my own grandchildren - and for all those of their generation - I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another."
"I’ve always felt that I was fortunate to have been born the middle child of three. My older sister, Helen, was very much like our mother: gentle, family-oriented, eager to please. Little brother Jon was the only boy and had interests that he shared with Dad; together they were always working on electric trains and erector sets; and later, when Jon was older, they always seemed to have their heads under the raised hood of a car. That left me in-between, and exactly where I wanted most to be: on my own. I was a solitary child who lived in the world of books and my own vivid imagination.
Because my father was a career military officer - an Army dentist - I lived all over the world. I was born in Hawaii, moved from there to New York, spent the years of World War II in my mother’s hometown: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and from there went to Tokyo when I was eleven. High school was back in New York City, but by the time I went to college (Brown University in Rhode Island), my family was living in Washington, D.C.
I married young. I had just turned nineteen - just finished my sophomore year in college - when I married a Naval officer and continued the odyssey that military life requires. California. Connecticut (a daughter born there). Florida (a son). South Carolina. Finally Cambridge, Massachusetts, when my husband left the service and entered Harvard Law School (another daughter; another son) and then to Maine - by now with four children under the age of five in tow. My children grew up in Maine. So did I. I returned to college at the University of Southern Maine, got my degree, went to graduate school, and finally began to write professionally, the thing I had dreamed of doing since those childhood years when I had endlessly scribbled stories and poems in notebooks.
After my marriage ended in 1977, when I was forty, I settled into the life I have lived ever since. Today I am back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, living and writing in a house dominated by a very shaggy Tibetan Terrier named Bandit. For a change of scenery Martin and I spend time in Maine, where we have an old (it was built in 1768!) farmhouse on top of a hill. In Maine I garden, feed birds, entertain friends, and read...
My books have varied in content and style. Yet it seems that all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections. A Summer to Die, my first book, was a highly fictionalized retelling of the early death of my sister, and of the effect of such a loss on a family. Number the Stars, set in a different culture and era, tells the same story: that of the role that we humans play in the lives of our fellow beings.
The Giver - and Gathering Blue, and the newest in the trilogy: Messenger - take place against the background of very different cultures and times. Though all three are broader in scope than my earlier books, they nonetheless speak to the same concern: the vital need of people to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment.
My older son was a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. His death in the cockpit of a warplane tore away a piece of my world. But it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth.
I am a grandmother now. For my own grandchildren - and for all those of their generation - I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 462 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Building 903 was such a powerful little book. I went into this knowing it had similar themes to The Giver, and I can definitely see the comparison. The idea of a world where books, imagination, and storytelling have been taken away was honestly pretty heartbreaking.
I really liked Tessa and Theo’s relationship, and I loved the message about how important books and stories are to who we are. It’s a short read, but there’s so much packed into it, and some of the ideas really stayed with me after finishing.
I did feel like the pacing was a little rushed towards the end, and I definitely wanted more from the world building and some of the unanswered questions. But despite that, the message behind this book is incredibly powerful, especially the reminder of what we lose when we stop questioning, imagining, and telling stories.
Definitely one that I think will stick with me for a while.
Thank you Negalley and the Publishers for the opportunity to review this ARC.
I really liked Tessa and Theo’s relationship, and I loved the message about how important books and stories are to who we are. It’s a short read, but there’s so much packed into it, and some of the ideas really stayed with me after finishing.
I did feel like the pacing was a little rushed towards the end, and I definitely wanted more from the world building and some of the unanswered questions. But despite that, the message behind this book is incredibly powerful, especially the reminder of what we lose when we stop questioning, imagining, and telling stories.
Definitely one that I think will stick with me for a while.
Thank you Negalley and the Publishers for the opportunity to review this ARC.
September 29, 2026
Lois Lowry was writing children’s dystopian fiction long before it became fashionable, and Building 903 returns to a question that has always suited her work: what might we lose in a society that prizes order above all else?
Tessa lives in a community where people can reach well beyond 100, and life follows a predictable path from education to career, perhaps marriage, and eventually retirement. But the apparent stability has unsettling gaps. No one wants to talk about Tessa’s missing twin, Theo. Her father seems increasingly stressed and dejected, and retirement means surrendering much of the life a person has built. When their neighbor Miriam is taken to elder care, she leaves Tessa a key and a cryptic message.
The key leads Tessa to books, objects her society has forbidden for generations. Her discoveries draw her toward Building 903, a storage facility on the outskirts of town where the seized books have been kept. Books have always been able to transport our minds somewhere new; here, Lowry makes that idea startlingly literal. They become portals for people who have developed the one capacity this society has worked to suppress: imagination.
The community’s greatest absence is not simply books, but the possibility of thinking beyond what is practical, familiar, and permitted. It is a deliberately heightened vision of a scientifically-minded society where progress has been stifled in the name of safety and ease. Lowry uses that premise to ask what happens to people when creativity and abstract thought are treated as risks instead of essential parts of being human.
Elise Arsenault gives the young Tessa and the adults distinct, engaging voices. The cast came to life without the narration pulling me out of the story.
I did have one reservation: the two characters presented as especially gifted in abstract thinking are a man and a boy, Tessa’s father and Theo. Tessa is the reserved and complicit child as is the stereotype for her gender.
The idea behind Building 903 is not entirely new, but Lowry presents it in a fresh way. She has spent decades imagining societies shaped by their own rules and revealing how those rules can diminish human life. Here, she practices imagining, the very exercise her characters have been denied.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperAudio Children’s for providing an advanced listening copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
Tessa lives in a community where people can reach well beyond 100, and life follows a predictable path from education to career, perhaps marriage, and eventually retirement. But the apparent stability has unsettling gaps. No one wants to talk about Tessa’s missing twin, Theo. Her father seems increasingly stressed and dejected, and retirement means surrendering much of the life a person has built. When their neighbor Miriam is taken to elder care, she leaves Tessa a key and a cryptic message.
The key leads Tessa to books, objects her society has forbidden for generations. Her discoveries draw her toward Building 903, a storage facility on the outskirts of town where the seized books have been kept. Books have always been able to transport our minds somewhere new; here, Lowry makes that idea startlingly literal. They become portals for people who have developed the one capacity this society has worked to suppress: imagination.
The community’s greatest absence is not simply books, but the possibility of thinking beyond what is practical, familiar, and permitted. It is a deliberately heightened vision of a scientifically-minded society where progress has been stifled in the name of safety and ease. Lowry uses that premise to ask what happens to people when creativity and abstract thought are treated as risks instead of essential parts of being human.
Elise Arsenault gives the young Tessa and the adults distinct, engaging voices. The cast came to life without the narration pulling me out of the story.
I did have one reservation: the two characters presented as especially gifted in abstract thinking are a man and a boy, Tessa’s father and Theo. Tessa is the reserved and complicit child as is the stereotype for her gender.
The idea behind Building 903 is not entirely new, but Lowry presents it in a fresh way. She has spent decades imagining societies shaped by their own rules and revealing how those rules can diminish human life. Here, she practices imagining, the very exercise her characters have been denied.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperAudio Children’s for providing an advanced listening copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
As a previous fan of Lois Lowry, this book was incredibly disappointing for me. While I'm not saying that a middle grade audience won't enjoy this and find value in it, I just think that it pales in comparison to her other books.
But the writing was definitely a highlight. It possessed that middle grade charm that endeared me to Lowry's work in the first place. The tone and vocabulary were fitting for the age range and I thought the content was thought-provoking enough. I think a middle grade reader would like this, but only if they previously loved to read. A child picking up this book to try reading for fun for the first time might be sorely disappointed. It's not exciting enough and doesn't process enough suspense to keep a child engaged.
Furthermore, the ending was really a disappointment. It was confusing. And not confusing in the "we don't have all the answers but that's ok because it leaves thinking about it for hours after" way. The ending was abrupt and there was so much build up for very little pay off. Speaking of the ending, the way it was resolved pushed a weird religious agenda. I'm all for freedom of religion but it felt so random. It came out of left field and had no real follow up to really make it meaningful. It felt thrown in there as an afterthought.
Overall, I think this book could be enjoyable for middle graders who already love to read. If not, this would not be my first choice to get a grade schooler to love reading. I would just stick with The Giver and call it a day.
I listened to the audio version of this book and I thought the narrator was excellent. She conveyed the characters really realistically and I could differentiate between the different voices very easily.
3 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperAudio Children's for this ALC in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.
📆 Publication Date: September 29th, 2026
But the writing was definitely a highlight. It possessed that middle grade charm that endeared me to Lowry's work in the first place. The tone and vocabulary were fitting for the age range and I thought the content was thought-provoking enough. I think a middle grade reader would like this, but only if they previously loved to read. A child picking up this book to try reading for fun for the first time might be sorely disappointed. It's not exciting enough and doesn't process enough suspense to keep a child engaged.
Furthermore, the ending was really a disappointment. It was confusing. And not confusing in the "we don't have all the answers but that's ok because it leaves thinking about it for hours after" way. The ending was abrupt and there was so much build up for very little pay off. Speaking of the ending, the way it was resolved pushed a weird religious agenda. I'm all for freedom of religion but it felt so random. It came out of left field and had no real follow up to really make it meaningful. It felt thrown in there as an afterthought.
Overall, I think this book could be enjoyable for middle graders who already love to read. If not, this would not be my first choice to get a grade schooler to love reading. I would just stick with The Giver and call it a day.
I listened to the audio version of this book and I thought the narrator was excellent. She conveyed the characters really realistically and I could differentiate between the different voices very easily.
3 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperAudio Children's for this ALC in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.
📆 Publication Date: September 29th, 2026
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
firstly, thank you to the publisher for an arc!
3.5 stars — i have never read award winning author lois lowry's modern classic the giver, but building 903 touts similar themes of censorship, comfort, complicity, and the radical power of books... that open portals?!
building 903 is the perfect companion to classic dystopian children’s books particularly the hunger games, the arc of a scythe series, and of course lois lowry’s own the giver; there were also various similarities to a 2010s dystopian series matched, which was a shocking throwback for me!
while there was a vast amount of socio-political commentary (the illusion of choice, rewriting history, fear of government, etc.) one thing that really stood out to me, and probably would have pissed me off as a child, was how tessa’s parents constantly gushed over her brother theo. this is a minor complaint, but omg if i read this as an 8-12 year old boyyy would i have been pissed!!
i definitely enjoyed this, and will need to check out the giver asap!
as for the audiobook, the narrator did a great job!
3.5 stars — i have never read award winning author lois lowry's modern classic the giver, but building 903 touts similar themes of censorship, comfort, complicity, and the radical power of books... that open portals?!
building 903 is the perfect companion to classic dystopian children’s books particularly the hunger games, the arc of a scythe series, and of course lois lowry’s own the giver; there were also various similarities to a 2010s dystopian series matched, which was a shocking throwback for me!
while there was a vast amount of socio-political commentary (the illusion of choice, rewriting history, fear of government, etc.) one thing that really stood out to me, and probably would have pissed me off as a child, was how tessa’s parents constantly gushed over her brother theo. this is a minor complaint, but omg if i read this as an 8-12 year old boyyy would i have been pissed!!
i definitely enjoyed this, and will need to check out the giver asap!
as for the audiobook, the narrator did a great job!
July 20, 2026
Review of early listening copy received from Netgalley
3.5 stars
I’m not the target audience but I could see myself reading this with my kids. This book takes place in a scary place (in my opinion). People live for much longer periods of time, but books are banned? YIKES! Tessa’s brother is missing, possibly taken, and erased from records. Tessa’s neighbor is being taken to a retirement home and informed her of a secret place in her home for her to inspect once she is gone. Books are found, so many important, formative books - yet, not really ones related to the story Building 903 is is trying to tell. Tessa coming across The Hunger Games would’ve meant more and been a better recommendation than say… Little Women or Moby Dick.
It felt like a lot of set up and then it was resolved very quickly. Excellent middle grade, I’m just not entirely sure it did what it sought out to do.
3.5 stars
I’m not the target audience but I could see myself reading this with my kids. This book takes place in a scary place (in my opinion). People live for much longer periods of time, but books are banned? YIKES! Tessa’s brother is missing, possibly taken, and erased from records. Tessa’s neighbor is being taken to a retirement home and informed her of a secret place in her home for her to inspect once she is gone. Books are found, so many important, formative books - yet, not really ones related to the story Building 903 is is trying to tell. Tessa coming across The Hunger Games would’ve meant more and been a better recommendation than say… Little Women or Moby Dick.
It felt like a lot of set up and then it was resolved very quickly. Excellent middle grade, I’m just not entirely sure it did what it sought out to do.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Can a person be too angry to write a good book?
That Lois Lowry is a great children’s book writer is without question. She’s been able to traverse not simply different genres in her older fiction (the fact that the same person wrote both The Giver and Number the Stars still floors me), but different age groups as well. She’s won Newberys, and her books are known beyond the children’s literary sphere. I was recently listening to one of my favorite podcasts “Marlon and Jake Read Dead” people and the sole person they have ever discussed on that show that is still alive is Lois Lowry (in terms of The Giver, of course). The woman knows how to write a book. Still, I’m not entirely certain what to make of Lowry’s latest title Building 903. Or, rather, I know what to make of it, but I’m uncertain how it came about. Ostensibly a book about the power of story in a world where story is now a distant memory, Lowry’s title simply doesn’t work. Not as a work of literature, not as a warning about our current era, not even as a comprehensible story. It’s as if the author was almost too upset with the state of the world today, and it affected the tale she wanted to tell. A rare misfire from a literary legend.
It’s been a while since Theo disappeared. Tessa, his twin, is, like the rest of her family, trying not to think about him too much. Life is pretty normal besides the fact that he literally vanished into thin air one day, though. She goes to school. Doesn’t cause trouble (you wouldn’t want to with all those government cameras watching you). Her president has been president for a LONG time, and probably will always be. Sadly, her elderly neighbor Miriam is being taken to a place that cares for older people (even though she doesn’t want to go) but that’s okay. But when that same neighbor leaves Tessa a mysterious key to a room full of boxes of illegal books (and all books are illegal), it upends everything Tessa ever knew. After all, in all her life, Tessa has never known what a “story” even is…
Lowry undoubtedly knew when writing this book that comparisons would be made to The Giver. Both are middle grade novels set in distinct dystopias (though they are very different dystopias from one another). A dystopia, ideally, is a world in which the characters believe that they are living in a utopia, until all it takes is one little string for someone to unravel that overarching lie. This world has a couple advantages over The Giver’s, of course. Tessa’s parents love one another and her. She feels that she can trust them (almost too much, if you ask me). Of course, no one knows what a story is, and the president is a tyrant, and then there are a bunch of little individual freedoms that have been whittled away. Still, it’s not like they’re killing babies or anything like they are in The Giver. That may explain why Lowry decides to hand off the whole revolution aspect of the book (an oddly superfluous detail that seems to have been tacked on only because she thought it would be too depressing if she let the current state of the world stand) to the faceless masses. This is a book where the overthrow of a tyrannical government is its least interesting element. Which is fine, but I can’t help but imagine how much stronger the book would be if at the end Tessa and Theo decide to join forces with the tattooed man guarding the books and they begin a life as revolutionaries, introducing stories to the masses.
It might have been more interesting if the revolution had been a little more central, but main characters don’t even get to participate in it! Their sole contribution to this new world dawning may be the fact that they know about the books, but even in that they’re not going to be unique because apparently the leader of the revolution has been hanging out at Building 903 (where all the illegal books are held) already. Who, I shall remind you, is their neighbor’s son. I guess that’s good, because if we know anything about revolutions it’s that when a new power fills the void of an old power, the newbies have a tendency to get rid of anyone they deem loyal to the previous administration. Tessa’s family would be in serious danger (her mom is an important security person and her dad is one of the elite geniuses). But since they met the guy who is the leader of the revolution and gave him his baseball glove back, I guess he’ll spare them? Someone needs to write the dystopian sequel to this dystopia. I mean, we know that tattoos are forbidden, so clearly it’s not all happiness and roses after this. To the book’s credit, however inadvertent, I did have the chilling thought that the world that comes after this is the world of The Giver. You can’t rule it out…
One might point out that Lowry really couldn’t put her back into the revolution happening in the book because if she did then it would add many more pages to the text. One of the great strengths of Lois Lowry is how short her books are. While other books might flail about with excess chapters, scenes, and characters, Lowry keeps things thin and tight. A kid approaching her books won’t balk at the size of them. She is almost always approachable in this way, and generally that works for her. Unfortunately, in the case of Building 903, I can’t help but feel that maybe ten additional chapters wouldn’t have been out of place. The pace of the book feels rushed (with one notable exception that I’ll get to) and details get muddied. For example, at one point the tattooed man is revealed to be their neighbor Miriam’s son. It’s played as a dramatic reveal, but I had to go back through the book to see if she’d ever even mentioned having a son in her conversations with the family. She had mentioned the same man by name, but she mentioned him as a friend who had been captured long ago (after laughing at the notion that she would have kids). I was able to piece it all together, but pity the poor kid that feels compelled to go back and do the same. And then, of course, there’s the aforementioned revolution that just sort of comes out of the blue. The foreshadowing for it, such as it is, feels more perfunctory than anything else.
There is, of course, one area upon which Lowry lavishes a great deal of time and attention: The exposition of what happened to Theo. Theo, as you will recall, has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. When at long last Tessa’s father decides to explain what precisely happened to his son, it doesn’t take a chapter. It doesn’t take two chapters. It takes five. 56 pages in a 228 page book. And as you might expect, it grinds the action of the book to a screeching halt. Everything slows down as they talk and talk and talk. Tessa’s father attempts to patch in some science to make Theo’s disappearance seem like something other than magic, but it ends up just muddling everything instead. Somehow the science is both too scientific and not scientific enough. Perhaps going the route of When You Reach Me where it is understood that there is science, but doesn’t require microscopic close-ups of the brain would have been a better path to take. Whatever the case, because there is no B storyline, Lowry can’t cut away from this exposition (aside from showing what Theo is currently suffering) as it drags on. Worst of all, when Theo finally does reappear at the end of the book, it’s not so much a relief as it is confusing.
Which brings us to a somewhat baffling element of the book. To rescue Theo, Tessa and her family transcribe a message that says that, “THEO NEEDS TO PRAY”. Which he does. Which rescues him. A literal deus ex machina moment, if you will. The sudden appearance of religion had me sort of flummoxed. This moment isn’t really foreshadowed in any way early on, nor is Lowry known to be a particularly religious writer in the vein of, say, Madeleine L’Engle. One could argue that there isn’t a direct link to God in that moment of prayer, more a connecting with the greater universe, but it is still, inarguably, a spiritual solution to a scientific problem. The Giver had a somewhat spiritual ending of its own, but it was in keeping with the rest of the book. In this case, had this book been written decades past, I’d swear it was an anti-Communist statement. Instead, I’m not entirely certain what it is. My closest guess is that Lowry is associating the human need for story with a deeply spiritual, almost religious, connection. But if that’s the point, one has to dig fairly deep for it.
Getting back to Tess and Theo’s parents, there has been a recent trend lately that I do not approve of. Mainly, that middle grade novels (particularly in 2026) not only contain living and emotionally available and mature parents, but also that those parents are actively involved WITH their children in the story’s adventure. And yes, I’m being a little facetious. But I read a lot of middle grade literature and part of the fun of any novel is seeing how the author is going to get loving guardians out of the way of the action. Usually. As I said, this year the parents seem to all be involved with the mysteries and the clue finding and the what have you. When Tess discovers that she has received books, real live books, from her neighbor, her first instinct is to tell her father. She suppresses that thought nobly… then immediately tells her mom. Now from a practical standpoint, this makes a fair amount of sense. The way that she is written, Tess trusts her parents implicitly (even after her father confesses to doing something that led to Theo’s disappearance) and at no point in this book does that ever change, and this gets to the crux of the trouble I have with her. Tess is a particularly passive protagonist. She DOES have the wherewithal to go into her neighbor’s home undetected at one point, and that’s neat, but after that she does absolutely nothing to move the plot along aside from talking to her brother in their secret language. I confess, I have never wanted a protagonist to be an orphan so badly before.
I’m also a bit uncertain why Lowry thought that making this a story within a story was a necessary move. The book begins in a future beyond the future world of the book, when everything has presumably become better than it was (though I still like my theory that it’s the world of The Giver). Normally, one would do this in a title for kids to reassure the reader ahead of time that no matter how dark the contents of the tale, it’ll all turn out all right in the end. But, of course, things don’t get all that dark in Building 903. They get dark for Theo, but even that is distant from the action of Tessa and her family.
So what precisely happened here? One thought is that it’s possible that Lowry wrote this as a conscious counterpoint to The Giver. The Giver was published in 1993 but I never had a sense that it was a reaction to the era. It’s a rather timeless book, feeling just as fresh and interesting now as ever. Building 903 is, if nothing else, a reflection of 2026. Or perhaps Lowry was curious to try her own hand at a kind of Wrinkle in Time style of writing. One that melds the spiritual with the science fiction. Yet to my mind, the theory that makes the most sense is that she may have written the book from a place of anger. Understandable anger. Anger at the book banners that wish to limit access to stories (or only promote their own versions). Anger at a President that bears more than a passing resemblance to the mockery of a leader that presides, faceless, over this book. It could account for why the book starts strong, but then ends up feeling more like an incomplete first draft that a final novel. Lois Lowry is, as I said, a great children’s book writer, without question. Yet even the greatest writers have moments when they need to get something out of their system. We just don’t need to read them when they do.
That Lois Lowry is a great children’s book writer is without question. She’s been able to traverse not simply different genres in her older fiction (the fact that the same person wrote both The Giver and Number the Stars still floors me), but different age groups as well. She’s won Newberys, and her books are known beyond the children’s literary sphere. I was recently listening to one of my favorite podcasts “Marlon and Jake Read Dead” people and the sole person they have ever discussed on that show that is still alive is Lois Lowry (in terms of The Giver, of course). The woman knows how to write a book. Still, I’m not entirely certain what to make of Lowry’s latest title Building 903. Or, rather, I know what to make of it, but I’m uncertain how it came about. Ostensibly a book about the power of story in a world where story is now a distant memory, Lowry’s title simply doesn’t work. Not as a work of literature, not as a warning about our current era, not even as a comprehensible story. It’s as if the author was almost too upset with the state of the world today, and it affected the tale she wanted to tell. A rare misfire from a literary legend.
It’s been a while since Theo disappeared. Tessa, his twin, is, like the rest of her family, trying not to think about him too much. Life is pretty normal besides the fact that he literally vanished into thin air one day, though. She goes to school. Doesn’t cause trouble (you wouldn’t want to with all those government cameras watching you). Her president has been president for a LONG time, and probably will always be. Sadly, her elderly neighbor Miriam is being taken to a place that cares for older people (even though she doesn’t want to go) but that’s okay. But when that same neighbor leaves Tessa a mysterious key to a room full of boxes of illegal books (and all books are illegal), it upends everything Tessa ever knew. After all, in all her life, Tessa has never known what a “story” even is…
Lowry undoubtedly knew when writing this book that comparisons would be made to The Giver. Both are middle grade novels set in distinct dystopias (though they are very different dystopias from one another). A dystopia, ideally, is a world in which the characters believe that they are living in a utopia, until all it takes is one little string for someone to unravel that overarching lie. This world has a couple advantages over The Giver’s, of course. Tessa’s parents love one another and her. She feels that she can trust them (almost too much, if you ask me). Of course, no one knows what a story is, and the president is a tyrant, and then there are a bunch of little individual freedoms that have been whittled away. Still, it’s not like they’re killing babies or anything like they are in The Giver. That may explain why Lowry decides to hand off the whole revolution aspect of the book (an oddly superfluous detail that seems to have been tacked on only because she thought it would be too depressing if she let the current state of the world stand) to the faceless masses. This is a book where the overthrow of a tyrannical government is its least interesting element. Which is fine, but I can’t help but imagine how much stronger the book would be if at the end Tessa and Theo decide to join forces with the tattooed man guarding the books and they begin a life as revolutionaries, introducing stories to the masses.
It might have been more interesting if the revolution had been a little more central, but main characters don’t even get to participate in it! Their sole contribution to this new world dawning may be the fact that they know about the books, but even in that they’re not going to be unique because apparently the leader of the revolution has been hanging out at Building 903 (where all the illegal books are held) already. Who, I shall remind you, is their neighbor’s son. I guess that’s good, because if we know anything about revolutions it’s that when a new power fills the void of an old power, the newbies have a tendency to get rid of anyone they deem loyal to the previous administration. Tessa’s family would be in serious danger (her mom is an important security person and her dad is one of the elite geniuses). But since they met the guy who is the leader of the revolution and gave him his baseball glove back, I guess he’ll spare them? Someone needs to write the dystopian sequel to this dystopia. I mean, we know that tattoos are forbidden, so clearly it’s not all happiness and roses after this. To the book’s credit, however inadvertent, I did have the chilling thought that the world that comes after this is the world of The Giver. You can’t rule it out…
One might point out that Lowry really couldn’t put her back into the revolution happening in the book because if she did then it would add many more pages to the text. One of the great strengths of Lois Lowry is how short her books are. While other books might flail about with excess chapters, scenes, and characters, Lowry keeps things thin and tight. A kid approaching her books won’t balk at the size of them. She is almost always approachable in this way, and generally that works for her. Unfortunately, in the case of Building 903, I can’t help but feel that maybe ten additional chapters wouldn’t have been out of place. The pace of the book feels rushed (with one notable exception that I’ll get to) and details get muddied. For example, at one point the tattooed man is revealed to be their neighbor Miriam’s son. It’s played as a dramatic reveal, but I had to go back through the book to see if she’d ever even mentioned having a son in her conversations with the family. She had mentioned the same man by name, but she mentioned him as a friend who had been captured long ago (after laughing at the notion that she would have kids). I was able to piece it all together, but pity the poor kid that feels compelled to go back and do the same. And then, of course, there’s the aforementioned revolution that just sort of comes out of the blue. The foreshadowing for it, such as it is, feels more perfunctory than anything else.
There is, of course, one area upon which Lowry lavishes a great deal of time and attention: The exposition of what happened to Theo. Theo, as you will recall, has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. When at long last Tessa’s father decides to explain what precisely happened to his son, it doesn’t take a chapter. It doesn’t take two chapters. It takes five. 56 pages in a 228 page book. And as you might expect, it grinds the action of the book to a screeching halt. Everything slows down as they talk and talk and talk. Tessa’s father attempts to patch in some science to make Theo’s disappearance seem like something other than magic, but it ends up just muddling everything instead. Somehow the science is both too scientific and not scientific enough. Perhaps going the route of When You Reach Me where it is understood that there is science, but doesn’t require microscopic close-ups of the brain would have been a better path to take. Whatever the case, because there is no B storyline, Lowry can’t cut away from this exposition (aside from showing what Theo is currently suffering) as it drags on. Worst of all, when Theo finally does reappear at the end of the book, it’s not so much a relief as it is confusing.
Which brings us to a somewhat baffling element of the book. To rescue Theo, Tessa and her family transcribe a message that says that, “THEO NEEDS TO PRAY”. Which he does. Which rescues him. A literal deus ex machina moment, if you will. The sudden appearance of religion had me sort of flummoxed. This moment isn’t really foreshadowed in any way early on, nor is Lowry known to be a particularly religious writer in the vein of, say, Madeleine L’Engle. One could argue that there isn’t a direct link to God in that moment of prayer, more a connecting with the greater universe, but it is still, inarguably, a spiritual solution to a scientific problem. The Giver had a somewhat spiritual ending of its own, but it was in keeping with the rest of the book. In this case, had this book been written decades past, I’d swear it was an anti-Communist statement. Instead, I’m not entirely certain what it is. My closest guess is that Lowry is associating the human need for story with a deeply spiritual, almost religious, connection. But if that’s the point, one has to dig fairly deep for it.
Getting back to Tess and Theo’s parents, there has been a recent trend lately that I do not approve of. Mainly, that middle grade novels (particularly in 2026) not only contain living and emotionally available and mature parents, but also that those parents are actively involved WITH their children in the story’s adventure. And yes, I’m being a little facetious. But I read a lot of middle grade literature and part of the fun of any novel is seeing how the author is going to get loving guardians out of the way of the action. Usually. As I said, this year the parents seem to all be involved with the mysteries and the clue finding and the what have you. When Tess discovers that she has received books, real live books, from her neighbor, her first instinct is to tell her father. She suppresses that thought nobly… then immediately tells her mom. Now from a practical standpoint, this makes a fair amount of sense. The way that she is written, Tess trusts her parents implicitly (even after her father confesses to doing something that led to Theo’s disappearance) and at no point in this book does that ever change, and this gets to the crux of the trouble I have with her. Tess is a particularly passive protagonist. She DOES have the wherewithal to go into her neighbor’s home undetected at one point, and that’s neat, but after that she does absolutely nothing to move the plot along aside from talking to her brother in their secret language. I confess, I have never wanted a protagonist to be an orphan so badly before.
I’m also a bit uncertain why Lowry thought that making this a story within a story was a necessary move. The book begins in a future beyond the future world of the book, when everything has presumably become better than it was (though I still like my theory that it’s the world of The Giver). Normally, one would do this in a title for kids to reassure the reader ahead of time that no matter how dark the contents of the tale, it’ll all turn out all right in the end. But, of course, things don’t get all that dark in Building 903. They get dark for Theo, but even that is distant from the action of Tessa and her family.
So what precisely happened here? One thought is that it’s possible that Lowry wrote this as a conscious counterpoint to The Giver. The Giver was published in 1993 but I never had a sense that it was a reaction to the era. It’s a rather timeless book, feeling just as fresh and interesting now as ever. Building 903 is, if nothing else, a reflection of 2026. Or perhaps Lowry was curious to try her own hand at a kind of Wrinkle in Time style of writing. One that melds the spiritual with the science fiction. Yet to my mind, the theory that makes the most sense is that she may have written the book from a place of anger. Understandable anger. Anger at the book banners that wish to limit access to stories (or only promote their own versions). Anger at a President that bears more than a passing resemblance to the mockery of a leader that presides, faceless, over this book. It could account for why the book starts strong, but then ends up feeling more like an incomplete first draft that a final novel. Lois Lowry is, as I said, a great children’s book writer, without question. Yet even the greatest writers have moments when they need to get something out of their system. We just don’t need to read them when they do.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
PUBLISH DATE: September 29, 2026
Building 903 by Lois Lowry
5 Stars
There’s something quietly powerful about returning to a familiar voice and realizing it still has new things to say.
Building 903 feels, in many ways, like a thematic companion to The Giver, but it reads less like a repetition and more like a reflection. This is a story about control, comfort, and complicity; but more than that, it’s about what survives when access to stories is taken away. Lowry leans into the idea that books are not just objects, but vessels of memory, identity, and resistance. And here, that idea is explored with a calm, steady intensity that never feels heavy handed.
The world she builds is unsettling not because it is chaotic, but because it is orderly. Safe. Comfortable. That quiet trade off, freedom for ease, sits at the center of the story, and it’s where the emotional weight begins to gather. Through Tessa, we see what it means to question that comfort, and more importantly, what it costs to do so.
One of the most striking elements is how the novel treats storytelling itself. There are clear nods to the kinds of books that shape us; both the challenging and the comforting, and Lowry seems to be reminding readers that all stories, in their own way, expand what it means to be human. But she also complicates that idea. Not every story is told. Not every truth is shared.
By the time we reach the epilogue, the focus shifts in a subtle but profound way. The question is no longer just about censorship imposed by a system, but about the quieter, more personal act of choosing what to say and what to withhold. Tessa, now a storyteller herself, makes choices that echo what came before her, deciding which parts of the past are too complex, too painful, or perhaps too intimate to pass on.
That final note lingers. It suggests that even in a world where stories are reclaimed, they are never entirely complete. Some remain fragmented. Some remain hidden. And some, perhaps, are kept that way for a reason.
There’s also a reflective undercurrent running through the novel that feels deeply personal. Without ever stating it outright, the book hints at the idea that a writer’s body of work may extend beyond what is visible, and that not every story needs to be attached to a name to have meaning. It’s a quiet acknowledgment that storytelling, at its core, is bigger than authorship, it’s about connection, memory, and what we choose to leave behind.
Building 903 doesn’t end with clear answers. Instead, it leaves readers with questions, about truth, forgiveness, and the nature of stories themselves. It’s thoughtful, restrained, and quietly haunting in a way that stays with you long after the final page.
This is not just a return to familiar themes. It’s a meditation on them. And it feels, in many ways, like a full circle moment. I’m so incredibly grateful to have read this book and add it to my list of
Novels that mean so much to me.
PUBLISH DATE: September 29, 2026
BOOK TITLE: Building 903
AUTHOR: Lois Lowry
PUBLISHER: HarperCollins Children's Books | Clarion Books
FORMAT: ebook
PAGES: 224
I received a complimentary digital ARC [Advanced Readers Copy] of this book via NetGalley. Thank you to the Publisher and the Author for the opportunity to read and review this title prior to publication. As always, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.
Building 903 by Lois Lowry
5 Stars
There’s something quietly powerful about returning to a familiar voice and realizing it still has new things to say.
Building 903 feels, in many ways, like a thematic companion to The Giver, but it reads less like a repetition and more like a reflection. This is a story about control, comfort, and complicity; but more than that, it’s about what survives when access to stories is taken away. Lowry leans into the idea that books are not just objects, but vessels of memory, identity, and resistance. And here, that idea is explored with a calm, steady intensity that never feels heavy handed.
The world she builds is unsettling not because it is chaotic, but because it is orderly. Safe. Comfortable. That quiet trade off, freedom for ease, sits at the center of the story, and it’s where the emotional weight begins to gather. Through Tessa, we see what it means to question that comfort, and more importantly, what it costs to do so.
One of the most striking elements is how the novel treats storytelling itself. There are clear nods to the kinds of books that shape us; both the challenging and the comforting, and Lowry seems to be reminding readers that all stories, in their own way, expand what it means to be human. But she also complicates that idea. Not every story is told. Not every truth is shared.
By the time we reach the epilogue, the focus shifts in a subtle but profound way. The question is no longer just about censorship imposed by a system, but about the quieter, more personal act of choosing what to say and what to withhold. Tessa, now a storyteller herself, makes choices that echo what came before her, deciding which parts of the past are too complex, too painful, or perhaps too intimate to pass on.
That final note lingers. It suggests that even in a world where stories are reclaimed, they are never entirely complete. Some remain fragmented. Some remain hidden. And some, perhaps, are kept that way for a reason.
There’s also a reflective undercurrent running through the novel that feels deeply personal. Without ever stating it outright, the book hints at the idea that a writer’s body of work may extend beyond what is visible, and that not every story needs to be attached to a name to have meaning. It’s a quiet acknowledgment that storytelling, at its core, is bigger than authorship, it’s about connection, memory, and what we choose to leave behind.
Building 903 doesn’t end with clear answers. Instead, it leaves readers with questions, about truth, forgiveness, and the nature of stories themselves. It’s thoughtful, restrained, and quietly haunting in a way that stays with you long after the final page.
This is not just a return to familiar themes. It’s a meditation on them. And it feels, in many ways, like a full circle moment. I’m so incredibly grateful to have read this book and add it to my list of
Novels that mean so much to me.
PUBLISH DATE: September 29, 2026
BOOK TITLE: Building 903
AUTHOR: Lois Lowry
PUBLISHER: HarperCollins Children's Books | Clarion Books
FORMAT: ebook
PAGES: 224
I received a complimentary digital ARC [Advanced Readers Copy] of this book via NetGalley. Thank you to the Publisher and the Author for the opportunity to read and review this title prior to publication. As always, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.
Read
April 27, 2026Not giving a star rating for this one.
Everyone should know Lois Lowry; The Giver and Number the Stars are both absolute classics. I was more than a little surprised to see this book coming out, as I didn’t think Lowry was still writing. But The Giver was so formative for me I leapt at it.
This is set in a dystopian future, after numerous climate change catastrophes, in a United States ruled by a man who is the only one allowed to run in the supposed elections still being held (his crassness, cycling through wives, and oddly colored dyed hair make the inspiration here… unsubtle). Peoples’ lives are tightly controlled, and many things are outlawed. Our protagonist, Tessa, learns about some of them when her elderly-but-spry neighbor is sent to mandatory retirement and slips her a collection of contraband - strange things called “books” that are full of oddly compelling untruths called “stories.” Tessa’s twin brother had vanished several months before the story, and there are clues that his disappearance was also connected to these illegal books.
If this sounds thematically familiar to The Giver, it’s because it is. And that’s what leads me to conclude I’m fundamentally incapable of giving this book a fair review.
The Giver was, as I said above, formative for me. I read it somewhere around age 10 and it completely blew my mind. So as I was reading this book, which addressed so many of the same themes and with a setting so reminiscent of the dystopia of The Giver, I expected to feel the same kind of thing. That didn’t happen, and I truthfully think it wasn’t fair of me to expect it to. The Giver doesn’t hold up that well as an adult; I revisited it a few years ago, and it was very definitely targeted at younger readers than me. I had the same kind of problems with Building 903 as I did then, having things in my head like, “oh come on, they managed to outlaw STORIES?”
And yet I didn’t have a problem with that sort of thing with The Giver. So I don’t know. I’ll have to throw this at some of my niblings and see how they feel about it.
My blog.
Everyone should know Lois Lowry; The Giver and Number the Stars are both absolute classics. I was more than a little surprised to see this book coming out, as I didn’t think Lowry was still writing. But The Giver was so formative for me I leapt at it.
This is set in a dystopian future, after numerous climate change catastrophes, in a United States ruled by a man who is the only one allowed to run in the supposed elections still being held (his crassness, cycling through wives, and oddly colored dyed hair make the inspiration here… unsubtle). Peoples’ lives are tightly controlled, and many things are outlawed. Our protagonist, Tessa, learns about some of them when her elderly-but-spry neighbor is sent to mandatory retirement and slips her a collection of contraband - strange things called “books” that are full of oddly compelling untruths called “stories.” Tessa’s twin brother had vanished several months before the story, and there are clues that his disappearance was also connected to these illegal books.
If this sounds thematically familiar to The Giver, it’s because it is. And that’s what leads me to conclude I’m fundamentally incapable of giving this book a fair review.
The Giver was, as I said above, formative for me. I read it somewhere around age 10 and it completely blew my mind. So as I was reading this book, which addressed so many of the same themes and with a setting so reminiscent of the dystopia of The Giver, I expected to feel the same kind of thing. That didn’t happen, and I truthfully think it wasn’t fair of me to expect it to. The Giver doesn’t hold up that well as an adult; I revisited it a few years ago, and it was very definitely targeted at younger readers than me. I had the same kind of problems with Building 903 as I did then, having things in my head like, “oh come on, they managed to outlaw STORIES?”
And yet I didn’t have a problem with that sort of thing with The Giver. So I don’t know. I’ll have to throw this at some of my niblings and see how they feel about it.
My blog.
June 20, 2026
Building 903
Rating: ⭐️⭐️ (1.5 stars; round up)
Format: ebook
Initial thoughts: What did I just read?
I’ve read and loved a majority of Lois Lowry’s books since I was 13 years old. When I saw she was releasing a new novel, I jumped at the chance to read it.
Highlights:
⭐️The premise/world of the novel is very on par with her typical dystopian setting.
🌟The idea of the novel was promising and intriguing.
Pitfalls:
❌Lack of connection to characters. While I initially liked Tessa and her family, the connection between reader and characters didn’t build into anything. I didn’t feel any emotional warmth, sadness, happiness, etc., to any of the characters.
❌Uneventful plot. Nothing happened. Her brother went missing. Citizens didn’t like the government. A lot of it felt like it occurred off-screen.
❌Unanswered questions. I have a lot and I’m confused.
❌Weird way to incorporate a religious agenda? I don’t want to spoil anything, so read the book if you are intrigued. I’m religious and even I felt like it was a little random how this tied into the (lack of) a plot.
Honestly, I feel like I accidentally read a spin-off novella to a book series I never read before. I’m that confused.
Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Children’s Books for an ARC of this book for my honest opinion and review!
Rating: ⭐️⭐️ (1.5 stars; round up)
Format: ebook
Initial thoughts: What did I just read?
I’ve read and loved a majority of Lois Lowry’s books since I was 13 years old. When I saw she was releasing a new novel, I jumped at the chance to read it.
Highlights:
⭐️The premise/world of the novel is very on par with her typical dystopian setting.
🌟The idea of the novel was promising and intriguing.
Pitfalls:
❌Lack of connection to characters. While I initially liked Tessa and her family, the connection between reader and characters didn’t build into anything. I didn’t feel any emotional warmth, sadness, happiness, etc., to any of the characters.
❌Uneventful plot. Nothing happened. Her brother went missing. Citizens didn’t like the government. A lot of it felt like it occurred off-screen.
❌Unanswered questions. I have a lot and I’m confused.
❌Weird way to incorporate a religious agenda? I don’t want to spoil anything, so read the book if you are intrigued. I’m religious and even I felt like it was a little random how this tied into the (lack of) a plot.
Honestly, I feel like I accidentally read a spin-off novella to a book series I never read before. I’m that confused.
Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Children’s Books for an ARC of this book for my honest opinion and review!
Want to Read
February 10, 2026I know this book is going to be iconic.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I genuinely need to talk about Miriam first because this woman is 135 years old, gets shipped off to mandatory elder care, and decides, "You know what this teenager needs? Crimes." She hands Tessa a key to a secret closet full of illegal books and basically kicks off the entire plot with the energy of a grandma who has absolutely run out of patience with authoritarian nonsense. Icon behavior, honestly.
Tessa spends the beginning of this story believing exactly what she's been taught because... why wouldn't she? In her world, books don't exist. Stories are considered lies. Nobody asks questions because questioning things is how you end up becoming everybody else's problem. Then her twin brother Theo disappears, and suddenly all those nice, neat little rules stop feeling quite so comforting. She has the exact personality type that keeps following one tiny question until the whole system starts sweating.
Meanwhile, Theo really said, "I wonder what this forbidden thing does," and accidentally turned everyone's life into a rescue mission. This family cannot have one normal week. Dad is already off doing scientist things, Mom works for the very government they're quietly starting to distrust, Tessa is trying to figure out what a book even is, and Theo has somehow managed to make reading the most dangerous extracurricular activity imaginable.
What I actually loved was that the family works together. I kept waiting for the adults to pull the classic dystopian parent move where they tell the kids to stop asking questions and obey the rules forever. Instead, Penn, Ginia, and Tessa slowly become this little team trying to solve the impossible. It was refreshing to watch parents actually parent instead of disappearing for two hundred pages while the children fixed society alone.
And then there are the books themselves. Watching people discover stories for the first time was probably my favorite part. They don't understand fiction. They don't understand imagination. They're looking at novels like someone just handed them a dragon and said, "Good luck." There was something really sweet about seeing characters realize that stories let you experience lives you've never lived. That landed without needing to make a speech about it.
I will admit there were stretches where I kept thinking, "Can somebody please explain what is happening a little faster?" About halfway through I realized I was still waiting for certain pieces to click together, especially with Theo's situation and how everything worked. Then once the answers started coming, they came pretty quickly. I found myself wishing we'd gotten a little more time to sit with some of those discoveries because the ideas themselves are fascinating.
The emotional part that stuck with me wasn't even the mystery. It was the idea that people had become so comfortable that they stopped noticing everything they'd lost. No music. No stories. No imagination. No curiosity. They weren't miserable because they didn't remember there was anything to miss. That thought honestly sat with me longer than the plot did.
This also feels like one of those books that younger readers are going to have completely different conversations about than adults. Kids will get the adventure and the mystery of finding Theo. Adults are going to keep glancing up from the page thinking, "...this is hitting a little close to home." Lois Lowry has always had a way of wrapping big ideas inside deceptively simple stories, and this definitely carries that same DNA, even if I wanted a little more room for the world and characters to breathe.
I closed this one feeling thoughtful more than emotional, and that's not a bad place to end up. The questions about who controls stories, why imagination matters, and what happens when people stop asking "why?" lingered with me long after I finished. For me, this landed at a solid 3.5 stars.
And thank you to HarperCollins Children's Books and NetGalley for the ARC. I opened this expecting a missing sibling mystery, and instead spent the next few hours wanting to hug a rebellious 135-year-old woman who weaponized a library against a dictatorship. That's a sentence I did not expect to type today.
Tessa spends the beginning of this story believing exactly what she's been taught because... why wouldn't she? In her world, books don't exist. Stories are considered lies. Nobody asks questions because questioning things is how you end up becoming everybody else's problem. Then her twin brother Theo disappears, and suddenly all those nice, neat little rules stop feeling quite so comforting. She has the exact personality type that keeps following one tiny question until the whole system starts sweating.
Meanwhile, Theo really said, "I wonder what this forbidden thing does," and accidentally turned everyone's life into a rescue mission. This family cannot have one normal week. Dad is already off doing scientist things, Mom works for the very government they're quietly starting to distrust, Tessa is trying to figure out what a book even is, and Theo has somehow managed to make reading the most dangerous extracurricular activity imaginable.
What I actually loved was that the family works together. I kept waiting for the adults to pull the classic dystopian parent move where they tell the kids to stop asking questions and obey the rules forever. Instead, Penn, Ginia, and Tessa slowly become this little team trying to solve the impossible. It was refreshing to watch parents actually parent instead of disappearing for two hundred pages while the children fixed society alone.
And then there are the books themselves. Watching people discover stories for the first time was probably my favorite part. They don't understand fiction. They don't understand imagination. They're looking at novels like someone just handed them a dragon and said, "Good luck." There was something really sweet about seeing characters realize that stories let you experience lives you've never lived. That landed without needing to make a speech about it.
I will admit there were stretches where I kept thinking, "Can somebody please explain what is happening a little faster?" About halfway through I realized I was still waiting for certain pieces to click together, especially with Theo's situation and how everything worked. Then once the answers started coming, they came pretty quickly. I found myself wishing we'd gotten a little more time to sit with some of those discoveries because the ideas themselves are fascinating.
The emotional part that stuck with me wasn't even the mystery. It was the idea that people had become so comfortable that they stopped noticing everything they'd lost. No music. No stories. No imagination. No curiosity. They weren't miserable because they didn't remember there was anything to miss. That thought honestly sat with me longer than the plot did.
This also feels like one of those books that younger readers are going to have completely different conversations about than adults. Kids will get the adventure and the mystery of finding Theo. Adults are going to keep glancing up from the page thinking, "...this is hitting a little close to home." Lois Lowry has always had a way of wrapping big ideas inside deceptively simple stories, and this definitely carries that same DNA, even if I wanted a little more room for the world and characters to breathe.
I closed this one feeling thoughtful more than emotional, and that's not a bad place to end up. The questions about who controls stories, why imagination matters, and what happens when people stop asking "why?" lingered with me long after I finished. For me, this landed at a solid 3.5 stars.
And thank you to HarperCollins Children's Books and NetGalley for the ARC. I opened this expecting a missing sibling mystery, and instead spent the next few hours wanting to hug a rebellious 135-year-old woman who weaponized a library against a dictatorship. That's a sentence I did not expect to type today.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to HarperAudio Children’s (Clarion Books) but sadly.... this was not it.
To preface, I think I've got a little bit more of an objective view than some other reviewers as I didn't read The Giver until my 20s (it's a great book! But not a Formative Book so I have some separation away from nostalgia). However, the parallels and similarities are super obvious - we've got a middle grade dystopia where information is being systematically taken from the people to leave them in ignorance of basically anything that isn't science and state-sponsored education. This includes music (except the national anthem, but all other music), any religion, books, and a slew of other things. One guy has been in power for decades (even more impressive when people routinely live past 125 years now), and has been known to dissuade others from running against him. So here we meet our main character Tessa, a 14 year old product of current society, a girl who's never read a book (they're illegal, remember), never heard of anything to do with religion, and is doing normal teenage things like going on a bunch of field trips to things like a fertilizer factory. But, her genius twin brother has mysteriously disappeared, her neighbor is being forced to move into elder care, and suddenly she has a bunch of mysterious boxes containing those ever illicit... books! Also all the cows and trees are extinct so who knows what's going on with this world, there seems to be no big reason for this except to say, "people used to eat x and y and now we eat pre prepared meals" kind of thing.
This actually started off as a pretty strong middle grade title - this, in the beginning, would have been a good class read, or a read with your kids to discuss that sort of dystopian fiction a lot of us grew up with, and how it reflects in today's world (why censorship is bad, the meaning of the freedom to read, etc). It's marketed as a love letter to stories and their power........ I was digging the beginning, and even posted a picture of my audiobook playing on my car radio (I was parked thanks) on bluesky like, "love that this diva is still writing middle grade dystopia in this year 2026" (this is how I found out she's 89 YEARS OLD). But... this wasn't it at all.
Spoilers to follow:
Less egregiously, Tessa was so often treated as lesser than her brother because she was above average intelligence, but not GENIUS level like him. She even asks her parents outright if it occurred to them that maybe she was lonely too at a certain age, or that she was also probably crawling when she was at a certain age, and they just pass her over and go back to talking about how cool and smart Theo is. Like, it allllllllllmost gets there as a disaffected sibling (and rightfully so) story, to give more depth to this character who really doesn't have much going on with her at all. The potential was there! But Tessa does nothing in this whole book except one run over to another location to send a message. A lot of it is her sitting around while her parents reminisce about the world that was, the leader they hate, and her genius brother.
It was nice that the parents got involved in these mysteries, and that Tessa trusted both of them enough to tell them about the illegal boxes she got from Miriam's old house, and that they all worked together to actively save Theo. Usually we see stories that parents just push off kids concerns as whatever and kids have to do everything themselves. But also all three of them read as similar age/motivation/characterizations so... maybe that wasn't hard.
This book was just a mess past the first few chapters and I don't have problems with books not wrapping up neatly but like, an overnight mostly peaceful coup? Magic "prayer"? Come on. And additionally, there's so much lacking that it feels like a book as part of a series or sidecar to a series that you're expected to have read - I even looked up some things about The Giver to refresh my memory like oh, maybe this is related... no. It's just a standalone that feels like a mid-series or related-to-a-series book.
In the end, skip this, read The Giver to your kids, or one of the other great dystopians out there.
To preface, I think I've got a little bit more of an objective view than some other reviewers as I didn't read The Giver until my 20s (it's a great book! But not a Formative Book so I have some separation away from nostalgia). However, the parallels and similarities are super obvious - we've got a middle grade dystopia where information is being systematically taken from the people to leave them in ignorance of basically anything that isn't science and state-sponsored education. This includes music (except the national anthem, but all other music), any religion, books, and a slew of other things. One guy has been in power for decades (even more impressive when people routinely live past 125 years now), and has been known to dissuade others from running against him. So here we meet our main character Tessa, a 14 year old product of current society, a girl who's never read a book (they're illegal, remember), never heard of anything to do with religion, and is doing normal teenage things like going on a bunch of field trips to things like a fertilizer factory. But, her genius twin brother has mysteriously disappeared, her neighbor is being forced to move into elder care, and suddenly she has a bunch of mysterious boxes containing those ever illicit... books! Also all the cows and trees are extinct so who knows what's going on with this world, there seems to be no big reason for this except to say, "people used to eat x and y and now we eat pre prepared meals" kind of thing.
This actually started off as a pretty strong middle grade title - this, in the beginning, would have been a good class read, or a read with your kids to discuss that sort of dystopian fiction a lot of us grew up with, and how it reflects in today's world (why censorship is bad, the meaning of the freedom to read, etc). It's marketed as a love letter to stories and their power........ I was digging the beginning, and even posted a picture of my audiobook playing on my car radio (I was parked thanks) on bluesky like, "love that this diva is still writing middle grade dystopia in this year 2026" (this is how I found out she's 89 YEARS OLD). But... this wasn't it at all.
Spoilers to follow:
Less egregiously, Tessa was so often treated as lesser than her brother because she was above average intelligence, but not GENIUS level like him. She even asks her parents outright if it occurred to them that maybe she was lonely too at a certain age, or that she was also probably crawling when she was at a certain age, and they just pass her over and go back to talking about how cool and smart Theo is. Like, it allllllllllmost gets there as a disaffected sibling (and rightfully so) story, to give more depth to this character who really doesn't have much going on with her at all. The potential was there! But Tessa does nothing in this whole book except one run over to another location to send a message. A lot of it is her sitting around while her parents reminisce about the world that was, the leader they hate, and her genius brother.
It was nice that the parents got involved in these mysteries, and that Tessa trusted both of them enough to tell them about the illegal boxes she got from Miriam's old house, and that they all worked together to actively save Theo. Usually we see stories that parents just push off kids concerns as whatever and kids have to do everything themselves. But also all three of them read as similar age/motivation/characterizations so... maybe that wasn't hard.
This book was just a mess past the first few chapters and I don't have problems with books not wrapping up neatly but like, an overnight mostly peaceful coup? Magic "prayer"? Come on. And additionally, there's so much lacking that it feels like a book as part of a series or sidecar to a series that you're expected to have read - I even looked up some things about The Giver to refresh my memory like oh, maybe this is related... no. It's just a standalone that feels like a mid-series or related-to-a-series book.
In the end, skip this, read The Giver to your kids, or one of the other great dystopians out there.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
What an interesting book. Initially, it read a little bit like Giver fanfiction (the world feels very similar in some aspects, just less… eerie? sterile?). Building 903 has some beautiful things to say on imagination and stories, and some of the paragraphs centered around reading the childhood classics I love so dearly brought tears to my eyes. There’s just something about the execution that felt a little bit off. Maybe it’s that this book feels like it’s written for a younger audience than The Giver was and I went in with the wrong expectations. Still well worth the read and would be a good first dystopian for younger readers!
Read
March 31, 2026I was initially so thrilled to access an early copy of this book, and I think it will likely do well regardless of what I have to say. The dialogue between mainly Tessa and her parents was so incredibly clunky that I found myself unintentionally skimming their conversations (which made up a huge portion of this book). So much of "Remember this?" "Well, you remember when" to provide some context for the reader and fill out the character's shared experiences. Surely there was a smoother way to do this, and I found myself bored by the way they shared information that they all know with each other. It felt like the characters were performing for the reader that they knew was there. I will say the first half does do a good job of establishing the setting and how this particular dystopia works. It feels realistic and certainly age appropriate. The themes championing imagination and of course being pro-book in a concerningly book-banning culture are relevant and important for young readers. Overall, not a slam dunk for me!
Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
review of advance copy received from Netgalley. >> thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this opportunity! all thoughts are my own.
⏔⏔⏔ 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒
I feel bad giving this a 2.5, but here is why . . .
1) The pacing felt off. It was confusing at first what the main conflict was and why it was happening.
2) Ir wasn’t my kind of book . . . it could be great for some types of kids, just not my thing ig
3) The cover and title were not my favorite either
I can appreciate the concept and the thought behind it, the themes were very interesting and I did enjoy reading somewhat.
If this seems like your kind of book, feel free to read it, for this niche it was well done, again, just not my style.
⏔⏔⏔ 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒
I feel bad giving this a 2.5, but here is why . . .
1) The pacing felt off. It was confusing at first what the main conflict was and why it was happening.
2) Ir wasn’t my kind of book . . . it could be great for some types of kids, just not my thing ig
3) The cover and title were not my favorite either
I can appreciate the concept and the thought behind it, the themes were very interesting and I did enjoy reading somewhat.
If this seems like your kind of book, feel free to read it, for this niche it was well done, again, just not my style.
September 24, 2026
This is definitely a topic that needs to be discussed, but I found the execution clunky and the ending enraging. It was slow and then completely ruined in the final 10 minutes. Religion magically solving all the problems with no actual explanation is very much not my thing. It felt very tone deaf given the use of religion to censor behavior and, yes, books. I am disappointed.
Thanks to Libro.fm for an ALC in exchange for an honest review.
Thanks to Libro.fm for an ALC in exchange for an honest review.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Read the full review with representation information and trigger warnings on my blog.
3.5 stars rounded down
Tessa lives in a dystopian nation where both political rights and personal rights like literacy and freedom of religion have been stripped from the populace. Her brother Theo has recently disappeared, and everyone is expected to pretend like he never existed, but when her elder neighbor Miriam leaves her some boxes behind as she moves into Elder Care, she learns that books are truly magical and may be the solution to finding Theo.
I thought the worldbuilding in this book was well done. It’s sort of a hybrid of science fiction and fantasy, although the reason that books can act as portals to other universes was never really explained. If you like books where a sort of wonder is maintained and the reasons behind the fantasy mechanisms aren’t explained, that may not bother you, but if you more prefer things on the science fiction side that may be a problem for you.
There was a surprising amount of religious theming in this book as well. This would be good for children who want to read speculative fiction but still have their stories grounded in faith. The family also all clearly loves each other, and the adults (Tessa and Theo’s parents and their neighbor) are more useful in this book than they are in a lot of middle grade fiction. If you’re frustrated by middle grade protagonists always saving the world on their own without parents who believe something bad is happening, this book is the antidote to that.
I had a problem with both the pacing and with the gender dynamics in this book. The characters didn’t start solving the problem until about 3/4 of the way through the book, so it felt very rushed. It also seemed like the ending was too easy for a dystopian book. It also seemed somewhat anti-feminist to me, as Tessa’s brother and her father are written as genuises and they leave their wife and daughter out of a lot of things because they allegedly won’t understand them. Tessa and her mother are of normal intelligence, and they mostly solve things through their emotions. It’s little messages like this that can tell girls that they’re not smart enough for science and normalize young girls being left out of things they could understand if it was just explained to them.
This book would be good for parents who are looking for a speculative fiction book for their children that’s age-appropriate but still has faith as a strong theme. I’d recommend it to fans of Margaret Peterson Haddix’s The Shadow Children series or of The Chronicles of Narnia, but I wouldn’t say it’s as similar to The Giver as the marketing material implies.
Building 903 releases September 26 from Clarion Books. Thank you to Netgalley, Lois Lowry and HarperCollins Children’s Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
3.5 stars rounded down
Tessa lives in a dystopian nation where both political rights and personal rights like literacy and freedom of religion have been stripped from the populace. Her brother Theo has recently disappeared, and everyone is expected to pretend like he never existed, but when her elder neighbor Miriam leaves her some boxes behind as she moves into Elder Care, she learns that books are truly magical and may be the solution to finding Theo.
I thought the worldbuilding in this book was well done. It’s sort of a hybrid of science fiction and fantasy, although the reason that books can act as portals to other universes was never really explained. If you like books where a sort of wonder is maintained and the reasons behind the fantasy mechanisms aren’t explained, that may not bother you, but if you more prefer things on the science fiction side that may be a problem for you.
There was a surprising amount of religious theming in this book as well. This would be good for children who want to read speculative fiction but still have their stories grounded in faith. The family also all clearly loves each other, and the adults (Tessa and Theo’s parents and their neighbor) are more useful in this book than they are in a lot of middle grade fiction. If you’re frustrated by middle grade protagonists always saving the world on their own without parents who believe something bad is happening, this book is the antidote to that.
I had a problem with both the pacing and with the gender dynamics in this book. The characters didn’t start solving the problem until about 3/4 of the way through the book, so it felt very rushed. It also seemed like the ending was too easy for a dystopian book. It also seemed somewhat anti-feminist to me, as Tessa’s brother and her father are written as genuises and they leave their wife and daughter out of a lot of things because they allegedly won’t understand them. Tessa and her mother are of normal intelligence, and they mostly solve things through their emotions. It’s little messages like this that can tell girls that they’re not smart enough for science and normalize young girls being left out of things they could understand if it was just explained to them.
This book would be good for parents who are looking for a speculative fiction book for their children that’s age-appropriate but still has faith as a strong theme. I’d recommend it to fans of Margaret Peterson Haddix’s The Shadow Children series or of The Chronicles of Narnia, but I wouldn’t say it’s as similar to The Giver as the marketing material implies.
Building 903 releases September 26 from Clarion Books. Thank you to Netgalley, Lois Lowry and HarperCollins Children’s Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
July 24, 2026
Thank you to libro.fm for an ALC in exchange for an honest review.
I made it more than halfway through but ultimately I had to DNF. The writing was wooden and rather dull. The dialogue was clunky and lacked any type of actual reality of human emotion to it. The overall story could have been an interesting tale but ultimately did not have either enough meat or interest to keep me reading this.
I’m quite sad as she wrote such a wonderful book in The Book Giver and then there was this thing. None of the magic or the excellent writing from her previous works. I tried to genuinely finish this but I simply could take no more.
One star.
I made it more than halfway through but ultimately I had to DNF. The writing was wooden and rather dull. The dialogue was clunky and lacked any type of actual reality of human emotion to it. The overall story could have been an interesting tale but ultimately did not have either enough meat or interest to keep me reading this.
I’m quite sad as she wrote such a wonderful book in The Book Giver and then there was this thing. None of the magic or the excellent writing from her previous works. I tried to genuinely finish this but I simply could take no more.
One star.
July 16, 2026
I read The Giver as a child and it certainly left an impact on me. I’m not sure if I would feel the same way reading it as an adult but regardless, I was excited for this new release from Lois Lowry. I did appreciate the themes of comfort vs complicity and the power of stories. But delivery is important, and this just did not deliver. The prose were straightforward but so incredibly boring. This also had so much potential if it had been given time to breathe and develop into a full length novel. I think I’m just someone who has a hard time with a book that gives little to no world building. Would I have liked this more if I had read it as a child? Maybe.
Thank you Libro fm for this ALC
Thank you Libro fm for this ALC
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A deeply moving and quietly powerful read, Building 903 by Lois Lowry left a lasting impression on me long after I turned the final page. Lowry’s signature clarity and emotional depth shine through as she explores memory, identity, and the family with a gentle but unflinching hand. The narrative feels both intimate and expansive, weaving personal reflection with broader context in a way that is accessible to younger readers yet profound. I especially appreciated how the story invites readers to sit with difficult truths while still finding moments of humanity and connection. It is a beautifully crafted work that feels important. I would highly recommend to anyone who values thoughtful storytelling.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This was so good, and while I wanted more from it, I think it was a good length for the story it was trying to tell. I can’t wait for our copy to arrive at work so I can recommend it to many young readers. Fans of The Giver, of all ages, should definitely check this out when it comes out next week!!
September 29, 2026
3.5 stars rounding down. A quick middle grade book that was reminiscent of A Wrinkle in Time. I like what the author was trying to say about books and our imagination. The ending felt a bit rushed with a lot of set up before it but I would definitely recommend this to middle grade readers (thought I might need to explain who Moby Dick was).
August 5, 2026
2 ⭐️ - ALC read
Thank you Harper Audio Children’s and Netgalley for this ALC!
(This review is spoiler free until a designed section marked with spoiler-relevant questions)
Lois Lowry presents a new dystopian world in which, in the 2090s, society operates primarily on screens, devices, and with robots. The world has been sanitized of animals, sports, the arts, books, even refrigerators (do I want to know what is in their food packages?), and it’s run primarily on the whims of a continuously re-elected (but not opposed) leader. Sound familiar?
I think Lowry presents a book that is ripe for discussion with (middle-grade) students.
- How does eliminating books, the arts, even sports impact society?
- How do the government enact laws and how do the different characters react to contraband material?
- We see several generations. Elderly, Parents, and Children. How do each of their upbringings shape their perspective.
- What does segregating the “retiring” population (who lived experience with banned items) do? Or the ex-cogni-superior people (some appear autistic)?
- How does imagination impact our daily lives? How does our brain work?
The plot and the characters, however, were underwhelming and passive. The plot is singularly focused in the span of several hours as 14 year-old Tessa and her family try to untangle how the vanishing of her twin brother, Theo, and retiring neighbor, Miriam, intersect. It’s a stagnant plot where there’s a lot of talking and actions & problems which are conventionally set up or solved. Characters (and the world) are interesting in the beginning, but we aren’t with them long enough to see introspection, development, or emotional depth. I would have loved to dive deeper with Tessa, who has drunk the kool-aid, as one may say, and Theo with his high IQ. The resolution felt unsupported and came out of left field given previous science input. As a 27 year old, I tried to approach this from the perspective of a middle-grade reader, but there were enough confusing questions that I feel even middle schoolers would have**.
Other books students are analyzing at this age such as Number the Stars and The Giver–both written by Lowry–or The Hunger Games or Percy Jackson, handle heavy topics in an age-appropriate way. Censorship is a theme in this novel, but the execution feels like underestimates the intelligence of its readers. I think the writing style matches the reading level with the exception of all the scientific terms though. I wish this novel was longer to allow for development. This felt like an early draft.
Audiobook wise, Elise Arsenault, does well narrating the majority of the story. My main issue is how jarring the POV shifts from third person to first person mid-chapter were especially the first time as they were not clearly announced. Elise’s voice is the same for two characters and it it took me out when I had to rewind or stop and orient myself. I would have preferred a clear (aural) distinction or a secondary narrator. These parts may read better visually.
Narration:
Type: Solo
Performance：★ ★ ★ ★
Character Separation: POV shift is jarring because it’s not clearly announced and male-presenting voices are the same. but Tess and secondary POV have distinct voices.
Diction: clear
Pacing/ Flow: ★ ★ ★ underwhelming story
Production: ★ ★ ★ above POV issue but otherwise fine.
Sound Effects: none
Sped: 1.5x
**Spoiler Questions I had**
- For a society that is tech oriented and surveyed. There were not any consequences or resistance in using their devices to ask incriminating questions, send messages, or enter buildings with contraband material.
- A boat of sailors from the 1840s had no problem with a kid from the future show up on their ship?
- The cleaning robots completely miss a visual self-made door with a lock (not existent) holding illegal items
- The revolution is immediately solved within like an hour and is lead by Oscar, Miram’s son? Wish we went a bit deeper since it was completely off screen.
- For all the scientific jargon that transported Theo into the book, only praying returned him home?
Thank you Harper Audio Children’s and Netgalley for this ALC!
(This review is spoiler free until a designed section marked with spoiler-relevant questions)
Lois Lowry presents a new dystopian world in which, in the 2090s, society operates primarily on screens, devices, and with robots. The world has been sanitized of animals, sports, the arts, books, even refrigerators (do I want to know what is in their food packages?), and it’s run primarily on the whims of a continuously re-elected (but not opposed) leader. Sound familiar?
I think Lowry presents a book that is ripe for discussion with (middle-grade) students.
- How does eliminating books, the arts, even sports impact society?
- How do the government enact laws and how do the different characters react to contraband material?
- We see several generations. Elderly, Parents, and Children. How do each of their upbringings shape their perspective.
- What does segregating the “retiring” population (who lived experience with banned items) do? Or the ex-cogni-superior people (some appear autistic)?
- How does imagination impact our daily lives? How does our brain work?
The plot and the characters, however, were underwhelming and passive. The plot is singularly focused in the span of several hours as 14 year-old Tessa and her family try to untangle how the vanishing of her twin brother, Theo, and retiring neighbor, Miriam, intersect. It’s a stagnant plot where there’s a lot of talking and actions & problems which are conventionally set up or solved. Characters (and the world) are interesting in the beginning, but we aren’t with them long enough to see introspection, development, or emotional depth. I would have loved to dive deeper with Tessa, who has drunk the kool-aid, as one may say, and Theo with his high IQ. The resolution felt unsupported and came out of left field given previous science input. As a 27 year old, I tried to approach this from the perspective of a middle-grade reader, but there were enough confusing questions that I feel even middle schoolers would have**.
Other books students are analyzing at this age such as Number the Stars and The Giver–both written by Lowry–or The Hunger Games or Percy Jackson, handle heavy topics in an age-appropriate way. Censorship is a theme in this novel, but the execution feels like underestimates the intelligence of its readers. I think the writing style matches the reading level with the exception of all the scientific terms though. I wish this novel was longer to allow for development. This felt like an early draft.
Audiobook wise, Elise Arsenault, does well narrating the majority of the story. My main issue is how jarring the POV shifts from third person to first person mid-chapter were especially the first time as they were not clearly announced. Elise’s voice is the same for two characters and it it took me out when I had to rewind or stop and orient myself. I would have preferred a clear (aural) distinction or a secondary narrator. These parts may read better visually.
Narration:
Type: Solo
Performance：★ ★ ★ ★
Character Separation: POV shift is jarring because it’s not clearly announced and male-presenting voices are the same. but Tess and secondary POV have distinct voices.
Diction: clear
Pacing/ Flow: ★ ★ ★ underwhelming story
Production: ★ ★ ★ above POV issue but otherwise fine.
Sound Effects: none
Sped: 1.5x
**Spoiler Questions I had**
- For a society that is tech oriented and surveyed. There were not any consequences or resistance in using their devices to ask incriminating questions, send messages, or enter buildings with contraband material.
- A boat of sailors from the 1840s had no problem with a kid from the future show up on their ship?
- The cleaning robots completely miss a visual self-made door with a lock (not existent) holding illegal items
- The revolution is immediately solved within like an hour and is lead by Oscar, Miram’s son? Wish we went a bit deeper since it was completely off screen.
- For all the scientific jargon that transported Theo into the book, only praying returned him home?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 12, 2026
eARC review thank you Netgalley! SPOILERS AHEAD!
When I found out Lois Lowry had published another book I jumped at the opportunity to read an advanced copy- especially because the synopsis was eye catching in regards to the theme of censorship and imagination/books. When I applied for it I was under the impression that it was a YA novel, however while reading I feel like there were several points where Lowry lost me as a potential YA reader because the vocabulary and critical thought needed to understand what was happening was at a slightly higher level than what I initially anticipated.
On a similar note I felt like the dystopian setting and Lowry’s trademark narrative style were the strongest parts of the story, because the plot felt weak and disjointed and my interest in the characters with their interpersonal connections was lukewarm at best. I spent the entire book WAITING to feel some strong connection to Tessa and Theo— or even their parents Ginia and Penn. But by the end I mainly cared about Miriam and wanted to know more about Oskar. This story as a whole felt so lackluster and incomplete in terms of the characters and somewhat random side plot of revolution. In a way it almost felt like too many important- and currently relevant- topics were being crammed into one short novel.
When I found out Lois Lowry had published another book I jumped at the opportunity to read an advanced copy- especially because the synopsis was eye catching in regards to the theme of censorship and imagination/books. When I applied for it I was under the impression that it was a YA novel, however while reading I feel like there were several points where Lowry lost me as a potential YA reader because the vocabulary and critical thought needed to understand what was happening was at a slightly higher level than what I initially anticipated.
On a similar note I felt like the dystopian setting and Lowry’s trademark narrative style were the strongest parts of the story, because the plot felt weak and disjointed and my interest in the characters with their interpersonal connections was lukewarm at best. I spent the entire book WAITING to feel some strong connection to Tessa and Theo— or even their parents Ginia and Penn. But by the end I mainly cared about Miriam and wanted to know more about Oskar. This story as a whole felt so lackluster and incomplete in terms of the characters and somewhat random side plot of revolution. In a way it almost felt like too many important- and currently relevant- topics were being crammed into one short novel.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
as a lifelong lois lowry fan who grew up loving the giver and gathering blue so much that i remember spending my hard-earned allowance on a copy, i was thrilled to hear that she was releasing a new book. perhaps it was the high expectations from my childhood that caused me to feel so utterly disappointed by building 903 - is it me, or has something changed about the writing after all these years?
building 903 was promised to be a modern giver; a dystopian, middle grade novel updated for modern times. in that sense, it did deliver in the initial part - we were treated to scenes of a 14-year-old girl issuing voice commands and swiping on screens, as the exposition explained why society had progressed to a point in the future where books, meat, holidays and even sports were either banned outright or a thing of the past. i would've rated it a 3/5 for most of the book. it was repetitive, as other reviewers have commented - i waited for the entire book to see how the protagonist's field trip to a fertilizer factory was going to be a major plot point, since it was repeated constantly during the book, the awe and wonder that the cast viewed books and fiction with also seemed excessively melodramatic (they described feeling afraid of the lies in fictional books, for example), but i accepted that as being suited for a younger audience.
the point where this book completely went into 1/5 star territory was when the grand reveal and climax came: seriously, what? i had to ask my friends who'd also read the giver as a child whether the author had inserted such heavy-handed religious agendas before, because that completely caught me off guard and not in a good way. instead of the themes of imagination we'd seemingly been building up to, religion was suddenly the answer to everything. if i were a parent, this is not the kind of message i would want my children getting out of this. which really made me wonder... what was the point of this?
i can't recommend this, unfortunately. i received an arc of the audiobook edition in exchange for an honest review.
building 903 was promised to be a modern giver; a dystopian, middle grade novel updated for modern times. in that sense, it did deliver in the initial part - we were treated to scenes of a 14-year-old girl issuing voice commands and swiping on screens, as the exposition explained why society had progressed to a point in the future where books, meat, holidays and even sports were either banned outright or a thing of the past. i would've rated it a 3/5 for most of the book. it was repetitive, as other reviewers have commented - i waited for the entire book to see how the protagonist's field trip to a fertilizer factory was going to be a major plot point, since it was repeated constantly during the book, the awe and wonder that the cast viewed books and fiction with also seemed excessively melodramatic (they described feeling afraid of the lies in fictional books, for example), but i accepted that as being suited for a younger audience.
the point where this book completely went into 1/5 star territory was when the grand reveal and climax came: seriously, what? i had to ask my friends who'd also read the giver as a child whether the author had inserted such heavy-handed religious agendas before, because that completely caught me off guard and not in a good way. instead of the themes of imagination we'd seemingly been building up to, religion was suddenly the answer to everything. if i were a parent, this is not the kind of message i would want my children getting out of this. which really made me wonder... what was the point of this?
i can't recommend this, unfortunately. i received an arc of the audiobook edition in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I was hesitant to write this review because, after listening, I felt like there must be something I missed. I took some time to process and opted to listen again. Unfortunately, even after the second read, I just don’t get it. I am a lifelong reader and fan of Lois Lowry so, while I’m not the target audience for this book, I’m quite familiar with her work. Building 903 had great potential to be a five star read for me, even if nostalgia was the primary contributing factor, however this book fell short in every way imaginable.
The world in which Building 903 takes place is very similar to that of The Giver. Humans are able to lead unusually long lives, most living to be a hundred or even hundreds of years old, but life no longer has the personality it did before. Over time, an authoritarian leader has criminalized and prohibited religion, books, sports, holidays, and so much more and, in doing so, language has become simpler and life is more formal. Conformity is the goal here and, while there is love, the human experience has been denied. I began to consider, without all those personal touches, who we are. But as soon as I felt like I understand the theme of this book, things changed rather abruptly. For the remainder of my reading experience, I found myself wondering what it was trying to do. The plot didn’t seem to go anywhere and events didn’t flow together, instead jerking the reader abruptly from one scene to the next. In addition to these issues, I also didn’t understand the last-minute unexpected and confusing religious agenda.
Overall, I can’t pinpoint one specific thing that went wrong in this book, only that it deeply lacked emotional impact. I will forever be reading my beloved copy of Gathering Blue, but I won’t be coming back to this story.
Thank you to HarperAudio Children's, Clarion Books, and NetGalley for the ALC.
The world in which Building 903 takes place is very similar to that of The Giver. Humans are able to lead unusually long lives, most living to be a hundred or even hundreds of years old, but life no longer has the personality it did before. Over time, an authoritarian leader has criminalized and prohibited religion, books, sports, holidays, and so much more and, in doing so, language has become simpler and life is more formal. Conformity is the goal here and, while there is love, the human experience has been denied. I began to consider, without all those personal touches, who we are. But as soon as I felt like I understand the theme of this book, things changed rather abruptly. For the remainder of my reading experience, I found myself wondering what it was trying to do. The plot didn’t seem to go anywhere and events didn’t flow together, instead jerking the reader abruptly from one scene to the next. In addition to these issues, I also didn’t understand the last-minute unexpected and confusing religious agenda.
Overall, I can’t pinpoint one specific thing that went wrong in this book, only that it deeply lacked emotional impact. I will forever be reading my beloved copy of Gathering Blue, but I won’t be coming back to this story.
Thank you to HarperAudio Children's, Clarion Books, and NetGalley for the ALC.
April 6, 2026
Reading this felt like coming 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦 to one of the authors who shaped my childhood. Growing up in the 90s, 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙂𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧, completely transformed how I saw stories. So getting an ARC from Lois Lowry who is now 89 years old?? 𝗜𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗜𝗖. 😭🙌🏼
𝘽𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 903 is a more reflective dystopian that leans into themes of 𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱, 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵, and 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺 all in the year 𝟐𝟎𝟗𝟗. The world feels eerily plausible; 𝘴𝘢𝘧𝘦, 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥, and just 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 enough to make you pause. I especially loved the focus on 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠𝙨 𝙖𝙨 𝙥𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧, not just stories, but portals to 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. It felt like a 𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡-𝙘𝙞𝙧𝙘𝙡𝙚 moment coming from an author whose books have done 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 that for so many of us. 📖🔥
It’s 𝙧𝙚𝙛𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚, 𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙫𝙖𝙣𝙩, and 𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙙 in the belief that 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘩, and 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩 still matter, even in the most 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙙 worlds. 🥹
𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆 𝑻𝒊𝒎𝒆 ✨
📚 Books as power / forbidden knowledge
🏛️ Controlled dystopian society
👑 Tyrannical ruler
🔍 Missing sibling / search mission
📖 Stories as portals
🧠 Awakening to truth
💭 Reflective, philosophical dystopian
𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝗚𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘆, 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝘆 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗲-𝗔𝗥𝗖 𝗶𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 💕
𝘽𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 903 is a more reflective dystopian that leans into themes of 𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱, 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵, and 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺 all in the year 𝟐𝟎𝟗𝟗. The world feels eerily plausible; 𝘴𝘢𝘧𝘦, 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥, and just 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 enough to make you pause. I especially loved the focus on 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠𝙨 𝙖𝙨 𝙥𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧, not just stories, but portals to 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. It felt like a 𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡-𝙘𝙞𝙧𝙘𝙡𝙚 moment coming from an author whose books have done 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 that for so many of us. 📖🔥
It’s 𝙧𝙚𝙛𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚, 𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙫𝙖𝙣𝙩, and 𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙙 in the belief that 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘩, and 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩 still matter, even in the most 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙙 worlds. 🥹
𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆 𝑻𝒊𝒎𝒆 ✨
📚 Books as power / forbidden knowledge
🏛️ Controlled dystopian society
👑 Tyrannical ruler
🔍 Missing sibling / search mission
📖 Stories as portals
🧠 Awakening to truth
💭 Reflective, philosophical dystopian
𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝗚𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘆, 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝘆 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗲-𝗔𝗥𝗖 𝗶𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 💕
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July 13, 2026Go on, dystopia queen, give us nothing.
First of all, word to the wise--both the director and the narrator of this audiobook failed royally at their jobs, so it is highly recommended that if you want to pick this up, you do so in print. The perspectives shift from third person limited to first person and back again, and there was no pause, ding or other sound to indicate shift, and absolutely no change in voice from the narrator to distinguish between the two, so I was totally unmoored and often confused for a good minute or two before realizing who was speaking. Very bad production; skip it and go for the text version.
Now, for the story. I really liked the setup here, and I could feel how hard it must have been for Lowry to create a new dystopian world when she is the literal model for all middle grade and YA dystopian fiction since 1994 and everyone would be wondering how she'd do it and be comparing it to The Giver. She succeeded here! It's a bit different, in vibes and in language, and that is good so you aren't looking around to find a Jonas easter egg or something.
That being said, this is a hot ass mess! It was all perfectly fine leading up, but then it was like a whole hour was missing from the recording, because we went from
First of all, word to the wise--both the director and the narrator of this audiobook failed royally at their jobs, so it is highly recommended that if you want to pick this up, you do so in print. The perspectives shift from third person limited to first person and back again, and there was no pause, ding or other sound to indicate shift, and absolutely no change in voice from the narrator to distinguish between the two, so I was totally unmoored and often confused for a good minute or two before realizing who was speaking. Very bad production; skip it and go for the text version.
Now, for the story. I really liked the setup here, and I could feel how hard it must have been for Lowry to create a new dystopian world when she is the literal model for all middle grade and YA dystopian fiction since 1994 and everyone would be wondering how she'd do it and be comparing it to The Giver. She succeeded here! It's a bit different, in vibes and in language, and that is good so you aren't looking around to find a Jonas easter egg or something.
That being said, this is a hot ass mess! It was all perfectly fine leading up, but then it was like a whole hour was missing from the recording, because we went from
Read
May 9, 2026Thank you to the publishers at Harper Collins for this ARC!
I don’t even know how I’d rate this book. First of all, I love this author and many of her other works. I was very surprised to learn about this book and the bold perspective she decided to take in publishing it, but it is so necessary.
Such an interesting concept that is eerily connected to our present day, with a glimpse into a future roughly 70 years from now. It’s all very relatable & you get a clear sense of what things could quickly turn into in our modern world. I could totally see how our society could mirror this one, and you become hauntingly aware of how close we are to entire generations not having any ability to comprehend concepts, words, and even just normal aspects of our present every day existence. The last 30% was very wham bam 💥 & everything wasn’t clearly explained like I would hope for, but there is room for drawing your own conclusions as is typical for a L.L. book. It’s also meant for middle grade, so it concluded in a way that I believe would make sense for that age range. It also makes sense that the author couldn’t wrap everything up because it’s so close to our current existence in time, & there’s so much flexibility for possibility. I did really appreciate the HOW for what aspects made the impact in the end, as it was a faith-based nod that Lowry is not a stranger to. It would make a great middle school novel study!
I don’t even know how I’d rate this book. First of all, I love this author and many of her other works. I was very surprised to learn about this book and the bold perspective she decided to take in publishing it, but it is so necessary.
Such an interesting concept that is eerily connected to our present day, with a glimpse into a future roughly 70 years from now. It’s all very relatable & you get a clear sense of what things could quickly turn into in our modern world. I could totally see how our society could mirror this one, and you become hauntingly aware of how close we are to entire generations not having any ability to comprehend concepts, words, and even just normal aspects of our present every day existence. The last 30% was very wham bam 💥 & everything wasn’t clearly explained like I would hope for, but there is room for drawing your own conclusions as is typical for a L.L. book. It’s also meant for middle grade, so it concluded in a way that I believe would make sense for that age range. It also makes sense that the author couldn’t wrap everything up because it’s so close to our current existence in time, & there’s so much flexibility for possibility. I did really appreciate the HOW for what aspects made the impact in the end, as it was a faith-based nod that Lowry is not a stranger to. It would make a great middle school novel study!
September 28, 2026
When I saw a new book by Lois Lowry, I couldn’t request it fast enough. Middle grade dystopian, set in future without books or even the concept of stories, imagination, free speech or thought? 👏 I’m in.
So, the set up was good, the writing straightforward as expected, but some of the messaging caused pauses for me. I won’t spoil anything, but if you’re curious I’m sure several other reviews will call out what exactly parts seem discordant. I think the wrap-up was “too easy” and off the page, though I can see that being intentional for the grade level.
🎧 I enjoyed the audiobook narrator’s storyteller voice. She sounded both wide eyed and smart as the MC. Sometimes I didn’t realize there was a perspective shift for a bit, so multiple narrators or clear section headings would have been helpful.
Despite not loving this as much as The Giver, I’m glad I read it and look forward to hearing what others think. This book will spark good discussions, and that human connection is most certainly the very best outcome for any story ✨📖
Many thanks to Harper Collins for the early copies.
So, the set up was good, the writing straightforward as expected, but some of the messaging caused pauses for me. I won’t spoil anything, but if you’re curious I’m sure several other reviews will call out what exactly parts seem discordant. I think the wrap-up was “too easy” and off the page, though I can see that being intentional for the grade level.
🎧 I enjoyed the audiobook narrator’s storyteller voice. She sounded both wide eyed and smart as the MC. Sometimes I didn’t realize there was a perspective shift for a bit, so multiple narrators or clear section headings would have been helpful.
Despite not loving this as much as The Giver, I’m glad I read it and look forward to hearing what others think. This book will spark good discussions, and that human connection is most certainly the very best outcome for any story ✨📖
Many thanks to Harper Collins for the early copies.
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