Book Review: Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton.

In a rural English village in the middle of a snowstorm, the unthinkable happens- the school is under siege.
From the wounded headmaster barricaded in the library, to teenage Hannah in love for the first time, to the police psychologist who must identify the gunmen, to the terrified 8-year-old Syrian refugee, to the kids sheltering in the school theatre still rehearsing Macbeth, all must find the courage to stand up to evil and try to save the people they love . . .

Thanks to the publisher for my ARC copy of Three Hours. This book review is completely unbiased.

This is genuinely one of the hardest reviews I have ever had to pen…not because it’s bad, but because this book was all kinds of awesome. but also shocking.  Awesomely heart-breaking, awesomely nerve-shattering and awesomely guts tearing out.  This is a story of the present being forged by the past.  Are we all a product of our upbringing?  Just what parts of our past deems what we will become in the future?  How much to we cling onto the past?  Is it subjective?  Is it a case of mere psychology or individual personalities?  I’d like to hope that no matter what our childhoods threw at us, we would know what was right and wrong.  I would hope that our mere humanity would bring us out on the right side. 

This book is not for the light- hearted.  Three Hours is a book that is heavy in its content.  Its heavy in the emotional stakes and if you are anything like me – it will break you down, rip you open and leaving you with one tiny needle to try and stitch yourself back up with.  It is the kind of book that will inject cold hard fear into your spine. 

I don’t live too far away from the Dunblane school that was the victim of the UK’s only shooting massacre, and I can remember vividly how much devastation that caused to the families and the community as a whole.  It makes you question everything – your friends, your family, the thin line between reality and fantasy.  There won’t be a dry eye in the house – I completely soaked my ARC copy.  The author has an amazing talent for completely ruining her reader. 

“Love is the most powerful thing there is.” 

The headmaster in this tale is heroic.  He puts himself in the direct firing line, having no regard for his own life, therefore, he treats his students like his extended family, he allows them to just be themselves.  No uniform, no head boy/girl, no prefects and most importantly no religion.  That being said, this shouldn’t be a school that is targeted in such a violent attack, right?  He is the gentlest teacher I have come across.  This isn’t the first time he has put his pupils needs first…He has a big heart and his predicament pulls at your heartstrings. 

The pupils. The most important characters. The strength of them.  The will of them. They have different personalities.  They experience fear in different ways.  And yet… and yet they are as one in a terrifying situation.  They deserve the publicity; their names deserve to be said out loud over and over.  The perpetrators deserve nothing.  Some little details I didn’t see coming, some surprises.  It was harrowing and breaking bit by little bit.  I don’t want to give it away so just read the book. 

Leave your assumptions at the door.  They really don’t belong here.  This author…just wow.  The narrative blew me away.  This is the type of story that we really hope we don’t have to read about again, especially in the newspapers.  The author brought us the human impacts of such an act…the victims, the parents, the teachers and the perps.  It is an examination of the human condition in which, it displays it’s ability for cruelty.

Rosamund Lupton ticked all of the boxes.  She has weaved an intense web of mystery, an upsetting and haunting narrative that just won’t quit and the one thing that glues it altogether?  Love.  A storyline that is propelled by rocket fuel, hiding in plain sight.  This book is setting the bar impossibly high for the start of 2020. 

Three Hours is a book to remember.  An original work of suspense.  Hooked from the very first page.  This is an amazing race-to-the-end thriller that you have been craving.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rosamund Lupton is the author of four novels.

Rosamund Lupton graduated from Cambridge University in 1986. After reviewing books for the Literary Reviews and being invited to join the Royal Court Theatre, she won a television play competition and subsequently worked as a screen writer. Her debut novel Sister, was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, has been translated into over thirty languages and has international sales of over 1.5 million copies. It was the fastest-selling debut of 2010 by a British author, and was winner of the Richard and Judy Best Debut Novel of 2011 Award and the Strand Magazine Critics First Novel Award. Film rights of Sister are currently under option.

Lupton’s critically acclaimed second novel Afterwards also went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller lists and was the No. 2 Sunday Times fiction bestseller of 2011. The Quality of Silence her third novel was a Sunday Times best seller and a Richard & Judy bookclub pick

Her new novel Three Hours comes out on 9th January 2020.