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What happens when a man with a gun holds a small town’s school hostage? Experience the ordeal through the eyes of several major players in the drama, including:
• Evelyn Oliver, teacher,
• Meg Barrett, police officer,
• Augie Baker, 13-year-old student, and
• Will Thwaite, Augie’s grandfather.
While the gunman’s identity (and motive) is kind of a mystery (I figured it out pretty early), the novel also focuses on another aspect of the situation—what if? What if I die without telling my family that I love them? What if someone dies because I didn’t do anything to stop the gunman?
A very quick read.
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Add a CommentThis was a fairly good read. It was well written and contained enough variety of suspense to make it interesting.
The only thing is the author flits from character to character, sometimes a page or two is all that is written about that character, so you have to stay on your toes to remember each of the characters and the part they play. That makes it a little choppy, but, at the same time it also makes it less tedious.
This was a really good book. I have read several others of her books and have found them all to be well written. It is a cliché to say that this was a page turner - but this truly was. Read it in one day and stayed up late to finish as I couldn't put it down until I found out the answers to who and why this was happening. Highly recommend.
An armed gunman enters the school in the small town of Broken Branch - a school so small that all students are housed in different wings of the same building - on a Friday afternoon just before the start of Spring Break. As the school goes into lockdown, news travels quickly through the town and soon anguished parents are gathered outside the school waiting...waiting for what will happen next. Officer Meg Barrett, recently separated from her husband, holds the responsibility of the town's children in her hands. She keeps getting mysterious text messages from the gunman and thinks it could be her husband inside. Will Thwaite, who lost his teen daughter years ago to his overly strict rules, now finds himself in the untenable situation of knowing his grandchildren, his estranged daughter's children, are trapped inside the school. Augie, Will's granddaughter knows she must do all that she can to protect her younger brother, a third grader in Mrs. Oliver's class. Mrs. Oliver, a veteran teacher who was counting the days until her retirement in the summer, must do everything in her power to keep her students safe. Will officer Barrett discover the identity of the gunman and find a way to free the students before it's too late - or is Broken Branch destined to be another Columbine?
What a magnificient writer. Love her books!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This was good and surprisingly well written, I usually don't care for books that bounced from character to character and back again, but the style fit this story very well and each was not drug out and over done so it just flowed,
Will look for more from this author