Three Hours: The Top Ten Sunday Times Bestseller

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Vanity Fair– Rosamund Lupton looks at the books, poems and plays that inspired her novel, Three Hours https://tinyurl.com/ycu5r787 In rural Somerset in the middle of a blizzard, the unthinkable happens: a school is under siege. From the wounded headmaster in the library, unable to help his trapped pupils and staff, to teenage 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 little 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. Extraordinary… Three Hours is much more than a nail-biting thriller; it is a disquisition on values: of love and hate, of sacrifice for others, of risk-taking and courage’ The Times

In a beautifully engrossing opening chapter, Norton introduces us to the inhabitants of a small Irish community whose lives are about to be shattered by a teenage car crash. Following the victims’ families and the survivors over the next three decades, we witness the repercussions of the tragedy – emotional, psychological and practical – as secrets threaten to reveal themselves. Norton’s third novel is a thoughtful examination of sexual identity, shame, and the impact of collective grief. Three Hours I finished Three Hoursin the wee small hours of this morning. It's mind blowing. I'm still feeling jittery. It's so fast-paced and credible that at times I felt like I was watching rolling news coverage of a real incident where I knew the victims. I had that same pulse-racing, queasy feeling - the same inability to look away. It's a horrifying story but told with such compassion and humanity. A large cast of characters and yet you feel genuinely emotionally engaged with each one... Amazing -- Francesca Jakobi

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It is early days, but this could be one of the thrillers of the decade. If you read only one thriller this year; make it this one: it is that good’ Daily Mail

Some of the ends are tied up a little too hastily and the denouement threatens to collapse under the weight of complicated plotting, but Three Hours is so immensely gripping that it carries you along with unstoppable verve. There were so many brilliant things about the book but I did find it a bit slow in places. It seems so unlikely considering how tense some scenes were but I felt certain sections dragged on a bit. I predicted some of it which was a bit disappointing, although I admit there’s a lot more to the story than finding the culprit. A Good Read’ – BBC Radio 4 -Pippa Haywood, Felicity Montagu and host Harriett Gilbert discuss ‘Three Hours’ (go to 9.35 on the timer) https://tinyurl.com/ycx5xb8s Three Hours is narrated in 10-minute increments throughout this terrifying snowy morning (anyone with a schoolchild might find it unbearable, and a manipulative, sentimental quality does lurk within) starting at 9.16am when the headmaster is shot in the head. The ends are tied up a little too hastily and neatly, with some frustratingly unanswered questions, and the mystery of a third terrorist serves to muddy the waters.The sense of concealed menace hangs like a dense fog over the school never knowing if the killer is going to step out of the mist and shoot someone. The staff try to occupy the children without conveying fear but their anxiety is palpable. Worse still there’s more than one gunman! Over three hours from 9:15 am to 12:15 pm the lives of the school’s staff, pupils and parents will change forever.

In Three Hours, a mother who is desperate to know whether her son is safe remembers feeling jealous of his potential girlfriends the day before: “She’d had no idea then of the love she had for Jamie, had assumed it was possessive, grasping, but the make-up of her love is not like that at all.” Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton, published by Viking Oh no! I’m still breathing heavy! It’s stunningly hooking, terrifyingly growing on you and even though the high tension story building gave you nightmares and so many times you want to scream and say; “enough is enough”(as like most Americans say right now!!), taking breaks to clear your mind, you cannot put it down because you have to… correction: You need to see what’s gonna happen next. It's beautifully, elegantly written, SO gripping, intelligent, timely, affecting and moving Marian Keyes Beautifully written, emotionally note-perfect and nail-bitingly tense. It's BRILLIANT -- Tammy Cohen

Customer reviews

It's beautifully, elegantly written, SO gripping, intelligent, timely, affecting and moving' Marian Keyes, Again, Rachel This beautiful and sensitive story is narrated through the eyes of several main characters bringing a multi-layer human angle enabling the reader to watch the story unfold through so many different sides. There were so many characters and so many different points of view that there wasn’t really time for character development. It was also slightly unrealistic in places and I could really have done without the tenuous links to Macbeth.