Three Hours: The Top Ten Sunday Times Bestseller

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Oh dear, did I read a different novel to everyone else? I don't want to imply that this isn't a good book, as multiply people before me have felt touched and moved by it, but I personally experienced it as a struggle to make it through. Keep those tissues at the ready, because you are going to need them – Three Hours was a tear-jerker, but Rosamund Lupton handled a delicate topic with sensitivity and integrity. There were some upsetting scenes, but they were non-graphic and not just for the sake of gratuitous violence. The plot was character-driven, a psychological study unfolding through the eyes of a wide range of characters affected by the events – students, teachers, parents, and police. There are some fantastic characters in the book - some of the teachers Matthew Marr the brave head and his equally brave deputy Neil, Daphne the drama teacher, Jacinta the English teacher who read beautiful poetry to her students to distract them, student Hannah and one of the mums, Beth. Daphne is rehearsing Macbeth with the students when the drama starts and I love the recurring use of the Scottish play which creates some of the most powerful images and the students see that the events in the play mirror events outside the theatre and the end of the book ‘we were Burnham Wood coming up the hill to Dunsinane, marching to the beat of three words’ is just such an example. That image will stay with me for a long time. Their bravery is humbling.

A BEST BOOK OF 2020 IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, TIMES, GUARDIAN, MAIL, MIRROR, LITERARY REVIEW, STYLIST, RED AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING Vanity Fair– Rosamund Lupton looks at the books, poems and plays that inspired her novel, Three Hours https://tinyurl.com/ycu5r787 I've just finished reading this. Exceptional - so well planned and written. I'm also in awe of Rosamund Lupton Sarah Edghill It's beautifully, elegantly written, SO gripping, intelligent, timely, affecting and moving Marian Keyes

Three Hours is one of the most exhilarating reading experiences I've ever had. Rosamund Lupton takes a dark, painful subject and turns it into a novel full of hope and compassion. An amazing achievement. Emma Healey, bestselling author of 'Elizabeth is Missing' and 'Whistle in the Dark' It’s very hard for a book topic such as this to not have an emotional impact. As a mother of school-age children, I did find myself holding my breath in several parts. It was tense, at times almost unbearably so. I feared for the safety of so many of the characters. Rafi and Basi, Syrian refugees, are central: it’s Rafi, aged 16, who spots the first bomb (merely a taster of the horrors to come) and who, with remarkable sangfroid, tells the headmaster to evacuate the junior school. Rafi brought Basi, his eight-year-old brother, from Syria after most of their family was killed, bearing his father’s copy of Macbeth (his father would quote from it, seeing Syria as a “suffering country under a hand accursed”). Three Hoursis a brilliant novel - moving, relevant and honest. Rosamund Lupton takes us through the story of a siege in an English school, building on the tension and our emotions as the story speeds to its conclusion. She handles difficult subjects with sensitivity and intelligence, focusing on the heroism of the individual. An exceptional and heartbreaking read -- Jenny Quintana

This is an amazing book from an outstanding author. The start of the book is extremely dramatic and tense with students and teachers hiding in classrooms and the school theatre from gunmen and there are some superb images such as children piling books against the library door to prevent entry. This is every parents, teachers and students nightmare but the book goes deeper into issues that are so pertinent and relevant that from time to time I had to pause in the reading to reflect. An incredible, unbelievably powerful book... I forgot how to breathe as it explored what it means to be human - for better or for worse. It's taut, it's tight, it's appalling, it's uplifting, it's extraordinary. Simply stunning Dinah Jefferies There was an ongoing theme of a ‘mystery’ gunman and after reading the ending 4 times I cant seem to figure out who it was or if we were ever actually told who it was, anyone who has read it and worked it out please let me know as she tries to come to terms with what she is experiencing, I really felt for her and what she was living throughSo says one character in Rosamund Lupton’s Three Hours, an incredibly powerful, heart breaking and undeniably brilliant novel, the thing is you know, I believe that’s true. If you read this you’ll believe it too. 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. In rural Somerset in the middle 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 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.

Old School – on the edge of the woods rests the original Victorian structure where the offices, library, and one English class are located. An enclosed glass walkway leads to a newer addition – the theater. 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. The school is a campus of multiple buildings located in woodlands on the Somerset coast and includes a junior school, a senior school, pottery building and a theatre. It has continued to grow from the 1920s adding new to old and now provides education to 14 years of student needs. Several teachers and students occupy each of the buildings and their stories are told with compelling fascination when threat and fear hang over their every move. The novel explores how different people react, some stepping forward in moments of courage and those that don’t.

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Three Hours is Rosamund Lupton's best book yet, and that is high praise. A monster story for our fractious historical moment -- the age of the internet and of Columbine, of terror and mass migration -- when the monsters often look an awful lot like our own children. Chilling, suspenseful, humane, and brave -- William Landay 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. 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