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Three Hours

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Three Hours

By: Rosamund Lupton
Narrated by: Gemma Whelan
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Three hours to save the people you love.

A Top 10 Sunday Times best seller.

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 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.

©2020 Rosamund Lupton (P)2020 Penguin Audio Political Psychological Spies & Politics Suspense Thriller & Suspense Espionage Exciting Heartfelt Scary

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Critic reviews

"A brilliant literary thriller...moving, masterly, flawlessly orchestrated." (Sunday Times)

"Three Hours intersperses scenes of breath-sucking tension with stirring meditations on human nature.... The message Lupton's novel delivers is that only love can save us." (Sara Collins, Guardian)

"This could so easily be a story which spotlights evil and terror. Instead, it deftly weaves a message of courage, love and redemption, and Whelan's performance is absolutely electrifying." (Stylist)
All stars
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Humanity and it's best and also worst.Read this book. Best book I have listened to in a long time.

Must Read This

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Brilliant book. Had to just listen and listen. And will listen again! So many twists and turns.

Three (heart wrenching) Hours

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A cracking story well told and nicely narrated. I was relieved that the threat and danger to the children was handled sensitively and loved the Macbeth and Birnam Wood references

Love Prevails

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An astonishing book, beautiful, elegant, terrifying and uplifting. Read in two sittings interrupted only by the need to sleep. The story moves through three incredible hours in the lives of teachers and children, police officers and parents as a terrorist incident unfolds in their school. I remember exactly where I was the moment I heard about the shootings at Dunblane school a few miles from my home, giving the story a terrible resonance... but this is also a story about love and courage and it’s not to be missed. I heartily recommend this amazing piece of writing and the narrator who brings, pace, conviction and compassion to a story I wanted to be over. Yet I feared the end and inevitable tragedy likely hurtling towards the fragile lives in this very contemporary dilemma.

Gut wrenching, heartbreaking, wonderful.

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My only complaint is that the story was rather drawn out, and I felt irritated to find that I knew where the plot was going but the investigators took longer to reach the point. Obviously the clues were lacking in subtlety!

Quite good

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A fantastic book, well written and well narrated. First time time reading this author and certainly not the last.

Brilliant

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Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton is perhaps the perfect short thriller novel.

It's well-written enough to be engaging and doesn't cause you to constantly question why you are investing your time in it; for a comparison, take Robert ludlum. But the plot and the delivery of the plot is genuinely thrilling and ingenious. Most of all you actually care about the characters, about what happens to them and the jeopardy in which they find themselves.

This means the highs are genuinely high while the feelings of loss created by the seemingly inevitable climax is real. There are one or two flights of fancy, of course, however in general the procedural parts of the novel are well enough executed that you never find yourself thinking: this just could not happen.

Great stuff!

I I had one criticism, it would be that the narrator, Gemma Whelan, who in general is absolutely excellent in conveying emotion, gives various characters in this novel a very broad Somerset accent. No doubt this will seem an incredibly snobbish observation, but in general parents of people who go to private school don't have very broad accents, of whatever regional stripe.

Wonderful, terrifyingly escapism

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This audio book restored my faith after a couple of terrible choices. The tension throughout is so great you want to know the outcome but don’t want the book to end. The story line unfolds gradually with a range of interesting and likeable characters . The narration is pitch perfect - can’t understand the criticism levied in some reviews. Hard act to follow.

Brilliant just brilliant

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I loved this. I went through all the emotions of all the characters with them. Highly recommend.

Beautiful, sad, joyous, desolate, hopeful. Read it

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Very engaging story, kept me reading to hear how things turned out. Some unexpected twists. Good narration. Really enjoyed it.

A good page turner

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