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To the Power of Three: A Novel
To the Power of Three: A Novel
To the Power of Three: A Novel
Audiobook14 hours

To the Power of Three: A Novel

Written by Laura Lippman

Narrated by Alexandra O'Karma

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

There are excellent reasons why New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman has won the Edgar®, Agatha, Anthony, Nero Wolfe, and every other major award the mystery genre has to offer. To the Power of Three is just one of those reasons. Lippman’s brilliant and disturbing tale of three inseparable high school girlfriends in an affluent Baltimore suburb who share dark secrets literally until death, To the Power of Three is this “writing powerhouse” (USA Today), who has “exploded the boundaries of the mystery genre to become one of the most significant social realists of our time” (Madison Smartt Bell) operating at the very top of her game. Not merely crime fiction, but fiction that gets to the deep psychological, emotional, and human roots of a terrible crime, Lippman’s novel is one that will not be easily forgotten—a must read for fans of Kate Atkinson, Tana French, Jodi Picoult, and Harlan Coben.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateJul 12, 2016
ISBN9780062641526
Author

Laura Lippman

Since Laura Lippman’s debut, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the “essential” crime writers of the last 100 years. Stephen King called her “special, even extraordinary,” and Gillian Flynn wrote, “She is simply a brilliant novelist.” Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than twenty-five languages. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her teenager.

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Reviews for To the Power of Three

Rating: 3.586206896551724 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

29 ratings14 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A couple of chapters in I found myself becoming distracted from the story by an awareness that Lippman’s writing is very very good. The reader who performs it is as excellent as her material.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I think I would’ve really liked the story but the narrator was too distracting with mouth noises, swallowing and several times I heard gurgling intestinal sounds. Just gross - I had to stop.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Can't get past the readers voice and inflections. I like Lippmann. Just can't listen to this one.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Being a Laura Lippman book, this was a let down. Still very much readable, especially if you are bored. But, not up to her usual great writing. To me, it felt a bit slow through out the entire story. Then, the ending was not what I expected. To be honest, I expected something more than what it was.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Synopsis: Three girls meet in elementary school and remain good friends through high school. In their senior year, one kills another and shoots the third in the foot - or was that what really happened?Review: This really looks at interactions among girls and their friends and rivals. It also pulls in girls trying hard to pleases their parents.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    unrelenting psychological suspense
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Love Laura Lippman. High school group of thee girls, one girl brings a gun shoots Cat Hartigan dead and figure out the rest. A bit slow.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Why: I try to be open-mind about mysteries and thrillers published in mass paperback if it’s an author I don’t know, but I don’t really succeed. I chose this one because I’ve recently become addicted to HBO’s soulful, gritty show, The Wire, alternately heartbreaking and hilarious. Dennis Lehane and Richard Price have written for the Wire. Lippman is married to the show’s creator/head writer, David Simon. Now I know you cannot assume one spouse’s talent in an area matches the other (e.g., Dave Navarro and Carmen Electra; Roseanne and Tom Arnold; Whitney and Bobby; Ricky and Lucy Ricardo). But frequently they are in the same league: James Carville and Mary Matalin; Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins; Kurt and Courtney? (But I for one think Live Through This is brilliant and I do not think Kurt wrote it. Sexist!)I digress.Based on the reading of this one book, Lippman is not in her husband’s league. It is not a bad book, not at all. I turned the pages very quickly. I wanted to know whodunnit and why. It’s just that after years of reading mysteries with literary aspirations and literary fiction that deals in clues and bodies, a straight genre mystery/thriller seems flat. The characters could have come from Central Casting; they had very few insights; they didn’t view the world through apt and original metaphors; and I won’t remember any of their names next week.I don’t regret the experience, but I’ll be looking for new mystery writing elsewhere.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The story starts with three teenage girls, Perri, Josie, and Kat, locked in a school bathroom with a gun--Kat's dead; Perri has been shot in the face and is not expected to live; Josie's been shot in the foot. It appears that Perri killed Kat, then Perri and Josie struggled over the gun and Josie was shot, then Perri turned the gun on herself.But the evidence doesn't add up: why are there bloody footprints leading away from the locked door? Where are Josie's shoes? Where are all three girls' cell phones?The book bounces all over place and time, between different POVs, delving deep into each one, showing the development of the girls' friendship until a year earlier when there's an abrupt break between Perri and Kat. And despite the nonlinear progression of the story, it works, for the most part, because the psychological suspense is high and the characters are realistic and familiar (at least to anyone who is, has, or has been a teenage girl).My only problems were first, that there were a few too many characters, too many POVs. I didn't see a lot of point to teacher Alexa Cunningham's POV, for example--her scenes were very in-depth, but she seemed to be only peripherally involved, if at all, in the events leading up to the shooting.And then there was the ending. I don't want to spoil it, but it felt flat and anticlimactic. And maybe that was the point--that life doesn't always have a dramatic point. I can accept that--it just doesn't make me love the book.Overall, I loved the feel of the book: that somewhat dream-hazed, suspenseful, close-up portraits of how 3 teenage girls ended up dead or wounded. If it had been a movie, it would be an artsy one, with lots of out-of-focus close-ups. It's different from my usual reading, which is always a good thing, and I was really immersed in it up until nearly the very end.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Best friends Josie, Perri and Kat go into the bathroom at their high school. Shots are fired. One emerges with a minor injury, one with a life-threatening one, and one is dead. What happened is the mystery at the heart of this riveting thriller.After What the Dead Know, I was excited to read another thriller by Laura Lippman. This one had wonderful character development – I really got to know the three girls as well as a great many secondary characters (such as the huffy, hypochondriac school secretary, rendered so well in just two short scenes). It was well paced and very readable. BUT – and this is a giant but – the reveal is just lame, which is a big letdown after getting so into the story. It’s hard to recommend any book that has an unsatisfactory ending, but for a thriller, it’s especially problematic. If a subpar ending to an otherwise well written and exciting story doesn’t bother you, go for it, but if it does, you might want to steer clear.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I didn't really enjoy this book so much, every chapter (and sometimes more then one in each chapter) was a different lead character and some flashback chapters. It was really confusing and the outcome just wasn't wasn't worth it all to me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Three girls, best friends since grade school, are involved in a high school shooting. When the police get the bathroom door open, one is fatally wounded, one dead, and the other has a gunshot in her foot. How did this happen? Maybe more importantly, why?I absolutely could not put this book down, I HAD to know what had happened between these three girls. This was a gripping novel and does not disappoint.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Was very disjointed at the beginning - lots of characters. Makes you think.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This reminded me of Jodi Picoult. First you know what happens and then the author unravels the motive and story. Interesting and involving it makes you think about the power of popularity and the problems when people feel a need to fit in spaces they shouldn't.Josie, Perri and Kat are best friends. When one of them comes into school with a gun, one dies, one is seriously injured and another wounded. Who is to blame and why did they do this. It also discusses some of the issues of what happens when best friends drift apart.