The Three by Sarah Lotz

I wrote this review in 2015 but didn't put it on my blog and since I've just finished another of hers, I thought I'd post it here for context.

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 behavioural 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 behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival . . .

I picked this book up due to the very positive reviews in the leisure books catalogue. It was not the horror or suspenseful book I was expecting but still enjoyed it.

Four simultaneous plane crashes which should leave no survivors do in fact leave three children alive and a voice mail message from a fourth person before passing. This leads to all sorts of theories as to why the planes crashed and how the children survived. With a possible fourth child alive the world goes into overdrive to put the links together.

The story is told via news articles and interviews which makes it a little difficult to pick up the story if you were reading something else at the same time. It does however work for being able to cover so much information. While not a horror it does show how the world can get caught up in fanaticism and blindly following the "loudest person" when believing the world is about to end.

A bit anti climactic but still makes you question a lot of the world around you and definitely makes you think about choices you would make. Not a book that made me go wow but still very thought provoking.