rosamund lupton Archives - Diary of Difference

★★★★

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’s 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.

I am glad I got the chance to be part of the blog tour for Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton. I was reading this book while I was on a plane, travelling to Macedonia, and it was a great adventure all the way through. In all honesty, I enjoyed it a lot, but it didn’t make my favourites list.

A school is under a siege and the headmaster has been shot. The story is being told from the point of view of everyone involved – the students, the teachers, the worried parents, the investigators, even the bad guys… Different people are hiding in different places in the school, all hoping this is just a dream.

During the book, we follow a few story lines:

Hannah, the teenage girl who is in love for the first time, trying to help the wounded headmaster.
Rafi and his younger brother Basi, Syrian refugees, still suffering from PTSD
the parents that are gathered together, desperate for news that their children are safe
the police psychologist and investigators, who are trying to identify the gunmen
the students hiding in the school theatre, who rely on a Shakespeare play to calm themselves

As the chapters go through, the time passes and we get a better glimpse of the whole picture, and the story behind the whole attack of the school. It is very nicely written and amazingly put together.

The ending was unpredictable.

I loved the ending. Even though I had a lot of guesses, and I desperately tried to convince myself that the person responsible couldn’t possibly be the guilty one, the book proved me wrong in the most unpredictable way possible. The book’s ending is the ending you have been waiting for in a thriller for a very long time, and I was quite pleased for a few days after reading it.

Throughout the book, you will get hundreds of small clues that you won’t even notice, and in the end it will all make sense. I may have to read this book again, just to enjoy all those little hidden clues throughout the way and cherish them for the amazing clues they were. Also, to simply mock my inability to spot them as well. 🙂

If you love fast-paced thrillers and multiple point-of-view books, Three Hours should definitely be on your radar. I highly recommend it!

Thank you to Penguin House, for sending me a copy of this book!