Hostage Three, by Nick Lake is a captivating novel that does a fantastic job of providing a suspenseful story line while having a more melancholy, relatable side to it.

The viewpoint is from seventeen year old Amy. She remarks herself as an untalented musician that has lost her mother and doesn’t have much of a relationship with her never-home businessman father, while the only part of that remark that is untrue is that she is indeed a talented musician. The story line flows beautifully, where the clarity of the read only benefits. The constant clearing up of her past, especially as it refers to her mother, gets a bit foggy at times; but it rarely takes away from the lucidity of the book. I was very pleased with the explanation of certain Somali terms that an American reader wouldn’t understand. The only flaw in the overall clarity of the book would be how the dialogue between characters is set up; without any real punctuation, such as any open and close inverted commas. At first it makes it difficult to read but I was easily adapted to it within the first fifty pages. Amy’s growth, including the development of her relationship with her father, her growing understanding of who her mother was a person and the working through her feelings of guilt and regret, are all very real problems that, in one form or another, we as human beings have to deal with at some point in our lives.

Finally, a fictional book that is centered on finding love in a hopeless place has to have a happy, uplifting end right? Without giving anything away, I completed this book heartbroken and touched, which I have never experienced in a book before. Nick Lake, instead of going for the popular ending that everyone would be OK with, goes for a more genuine, painful ending that will stay implemented in your mind for weeks after you finish.