[ephemeral]

TITLE: The Three
AUTHOR: Sarah Lotz
GENRE: Fiction, Literary, Suspense/Thriller
PUBLISHED: May 2014
RATING: ★★★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Buy
MOBILISM LINK: Read

The Three should not work. With its cascading number of shifts in point of view (PoV) and multiple storytelling devices (chat room conversations, emails, newspaper articles, and books of nonfiction), The Three could have been boring, confusing, turbid. But the novel does work - breathtakingly, excitingly, page-turningly (is that even a word?) - from its opening sentence to its final words.

The story of three survivors - or is it 4? - of four plane crashes that occur on four continents on the same day, we readers are confused at first but as we strive to figure out exactly what happened, what is happening, a sense of dread begins to creep in...

And Bobby… I don’t like to say it, but I swear to God he was a different kid after the crash. I know, I know, it could’ve just been PTSD or shock or whatever. But before it happened… when he was small… look, there’s no other way to say it. He was the toddler from hell, threw a tantrum about a million times a day. I called him Damien after that kid in the movie, which made Lori mad. Lillian didn’t see the half of it–Bobby behaved like a little angel whenever he was with her, I guess because she let him have his way all the time. And Reuben started getting sick when Bobby was two or so, so she wasn’t around him all that much. Lori also spoiled him rotten, gave him whatever he wanted, though I told her the only person she was hurting was him. I’m not saying she was a bad mother. She wasn’t. She loved him, and that’s all they need, right? Although the truth of it was, I couldn’t tell if he was spoiled or just what my mother would call a bad seed.

The Three is one of those novels that you race through to discover... well, everything. And yet you slow down your reading pace because you want to savor this book and because you know early on that Lotz will be stingy with her clues. And re those clues, pay attention also to the words Lotz uses....

Pamela May Donald lies on her side, watching the boy as he flits with the others in the trees. (Crucial word NOT highlighted.)

Oddly, in a moment of sad synchronicity, some of the events that transpire in The Three eerily foreshadow, if not parallel, what occurs in the real world today. I sure hope the 'truth' that lies behind her fiction is not the truth of our real world. I prefer to keep my entertainments, especially the scary ones, at arm's length. You know, frightening with the intent to entertain, not frightening to scare you to buy a gun, stock up on food and water, and move to the Outback.

I know I repeat myself, but The Three, written by a less talented author, could easily have spun out of control, but Sarah Lotz is up to the task. Never, not one time, does she lose her story's sense, nor its trajectory. I devoured this novel, and suspect you will as well.