Monday, May 9, 2016

Lauren Reviews The Three by Sarah Lotz

The Three by Sarah Lotz
Published: May 2014 by Little, Brown and Company 
Source: Purchased
Rating: 3 Stars

Four simultaneous plane crashes. Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?

The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage.


Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioral problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behavior becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival... 


I just can't keep away when it comes to anything that combines a little horror and a little science fiction. I knew when I picked this book up that it would be a toss up... it could be great, or it could fall dangerously short of entertaining. In my opinion, it settled somewhere in the middle.

The book followed a strict timeline, jumping back and forth between the three surviving children and the fanatics of the world that ultimately always pop up when anything happens that is out of the normal. You know all those election memes all over your Facebook newsfeed that makes you wonder what in the world is wrong with your friends? Well... this book actually made me feel the same, but towards all of the U.S. Granted, the U.S. tends to get the short stick when it comes to a society's failures, but damn. This book made me question humanity just by seeing our society's reactions to the three plane crash survivors, rather than questioning the three survivors themselves -- which I can't quite tell which the author was going for. 

Unfortunately, I had guessed the ending of this book in the beginning of the book. It may be because I've read so many books in the same genre as this one, but even with expecting well... what was going to happen, the end was still lack-luster. It was short and unexplained, leaving me not with a cliffhanger, but more like I paid for a $30.00 dinner and left the restaurant still hungry. 

I still enjoyed this book, and I will definitely read more of the author's books in hopes of reading more of the descriptive and basically entertaining character development that the author provides. There is one thing I absolutely HAVE to mention. There is one itty bitty part of this story... when one of the three survivors is acting strange (as they all do), that was all out creepy. I actually sat up in bed and scared the heck out of the boyfriend. I just stared at him... hoping, praying... he could just sense my emotional reaction to what I had just read. But of course he just laughed and said, "What happened this time?" and he paused his video game to listen. Yes. Those are the kinds of creepy you are DYING to find in a book.  


14 comments:

  1. That pretty much sums up my response to The Three as well - I really enjoyed some of the build up (and I can guess the creepy bit - SO CREEPY), but the ending just felt a bit flat. I much preferred the ambiguity that went before it. But I'd quite like to read Day Four; Lotz did enough with The Three to get another chance at me :)

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    1. I've already bought Day Four too. Starting it soon!

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  2. I like the way you describe the dissatisfied feeling! But this does sound interesting all the same...

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    1. Remember... this is just my opinion. You may love it! :)

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  3. Oooooh...I'm always looking for creepy books to read, so even if this is middling, I'll have to give it a shot! It's rare that I find a book that's truly creepy and not just going for cheap thrills.

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  4. Oh, I loved THE THREE. Honestly, though, I was worried that I wouldn't. I'd started it and set it aside before restarting a second time. It's funny, though, while I found it creepy all the way through it was the final few chapters that really pushed me over the edge from an ok read to a favorite.

    DAY FOUR is something of a companion read. You don't have to have read THE THREE (or even to have liked it). DAY FOUR is a more straightforward narrative and much easier to get into. I absolutely loved it all the way through and highly recommend it!

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  5. Aside from how you describe the ending, you may have intrigued me enough to pick this up! I firmly believe that creepy children are 100x scarier than creepy adults, so I just can't turn a creepy child story down!

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    1. I am incredibly scared of dolls so... children creep me out too sometimes. Haha.

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  6. I love the premise of this book. Bummer that it isn't as amazing as it sounds like it could have been. I'm still intrigued, though, so I'll have to give this one a go. Thanks for the heads-up!

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  7. The Three is not my style at all, but after it was purchased by one of the ladies in my book club and I was the only one willing to try it - I went home and read it. And read until it was finished! I agree, it did fall somewhere in the middle, but I still enjoyed it. And YES, there were certain parts that also gave me the creeps. I actually think it will make a rather interesting movie....

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    1. Ooooohhhh... it would make for an amazing scary movie!

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