Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton

From Goodreads

The extraordinary new novel everyone is talking about from the Sunday Times best-selling author of Sister.

Three hours is 180 minutes or 10,800 seconds.

It is a morning's lessons, a dress rehearsal of Macbeth, a snowy trek through the woods.

It is an eternity waiting for news. Or a countdown to something terrible.

It is 180 minutes to discover who you will die for and what men will kill for.

In rural Somerset in the middles of a blizzard, the unthinkable happens: a school is under siege. Told from the point of view of the people at the heart of it, from the wounded headmaster in the library, unable to help his trapped pupils and staff, to wounded Hannah in love for the first time, to the parents gathering desperate for news, to the 16 year old Syrian refugee trying to rescue his younger brother, to the police psychologist who must identify the gunmen, to the students taking refuge in the school theatre, all experience the most intense hours of their lives, where evil and terror are met by courage, love and redemption.

My thoughts

I requested a copy of this via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I have read other books by Rosamund Lupton and was keen to get my hands on a copy of this one.

I gave this a 4 /5 stars or 8/10 and found it a compelling at times claustrophobic read. Told from the point of view of multiple characters this story will have you gripped from start to finish.

Gunmen are on the loose at a school and it's not clear who if anyone they are after or what the motives are behind the siege. Narrated in real time as the events occur, we learn some of the past history of the characters and narrators as the present story is interspersed with the back story.

To find out why this siege has happened you need to grab a copy for yourself. I doubt you'll be disappointed, it just takes a little time getting inside the heads of all the characters and working out what's happening. Once you're there though and you've worked out how they all fit into the story, you'll be as gripped as I was with it.

About the Author

Rosamund Lupton is the author of Sister, a BBC Radio 4 "Book at Bedtime", a Sunday Times and New York Timesbestseller, winner of the Strand Magazine critics award and the Richard and Judy Bookclub Readers' Choice Award. Her next two books Afterwards and The Quality of Silence (also a Richard and Judy pick) were Sunday Timesbestsellers. Her books have been published in over thirty languages.