Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    One Breath Away
    Unavailable
    One Breath Away
    Unavailable
    One Breath Away
    Ebook402 pages5 hours

    One Breath Away

    By Heather Gudenkauf

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    ‘He has a gun.’

    ‘Who? Tell me, where are you? Who has a gun?’

    ‘I love you, Mum.’

    An ordinary school day in March, snowflakes falling, classroom freezing, kids squealing with delight, locker-doors slamming. Then the shooting started. No-one dared take one breath…

    He’s holding a gun to your child’s head. One wrong answer and he says he’ll shoot.

    This morning you waved goodbye to your child. What would you have said if you’d known it might be the last time?

    Praise for Heather Gudenkauf

    'A great thriller, probably the kind of book a lot of people would chose to read on their sun loungers. It will appeal to fans of Jodi Picoult' – Radio Times

    'Deeply moving and exquisitely lyrical, this is a powerhouse of a debut novel' – Tess Gerritsen

    'Beautifully written, compassionately told, and relentlessly suspenseful' - Diane Chamberlain

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJul 1, 2012
    ISBN9781408969939
    Author

    Heather Gudenkauf

    Heather Gudenkauf is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Weight of Silence and Not a Sound.  Heather lives in Iowa with her family.

    Read more from Heather Gudenkauf

    Related to One Breath Away

    Related ebooks

    Suspense For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      All For nothing

      Jun 1, 2023

      All For nothing
      4 min read

    • Article

      Living With The Enemy

      Jun 24, 2021

      Sawaria Sajid, 21, Leeds Fragrant spices filled the kitchen as I tipped extra-hot curry powder into the vegetable biryani. ‘Woah, that’s way too spicy,’ my mum Abida, then 30, laughed, grabbing my hand. It was 2011, I was 11 and Mum was teaching me t

      4 min read

    • Article

      Crime Book Of The MONTH

      Jul 21, 2021

      by Lesley Pearse (Penguin, RRP $37) “Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours,” goes the slightly annoying theme song to the long-running Aussie soap. It’s a message the neighbours in this book seem to have missed. Young couple Nina and Conrad Bes

      1 min read

    • Article

      Our Child Is Innocent

      Feb 25, 2022

      Our Child Is Innocent
      4 min read

    • Article

      My first year WITHOUT MY MOM

      Mar 16, 2020

      My first year WITHOUT MY MOM
      3 min read

    • Article

      Motherhood as Muse

      Feb 15, 2018

      1. We were living in Philadelphia with our twin 13-month-old daughters when one night I returned from the store to find my husband holding E, her face blue. Her arms and legs made a slow but steady jerk jerk jerk, only her eyes were closed and when w

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Pain Jar

      Dec 3, 2020

      The Pain Jar
      7 min read

    • Article

      Living Nightmare

      Oct 1, 2019

      Living Nightmare
      4 min read

    • Article

      THE greatest LOVE

      Oct 21, 2021

      THE greatest LOVE
      10 min read

    • Article

      Dispatches From the Trenches of Domestic Life

      Mar 2, 2018

      Six years ago my wife gave me a pair of house slippers. My first ever. A domestic present I thought signaled some new phase of my life. I thanked her. Tried them on. Plush fur lined the inside. I stood up to make a show of enjoying them. Then she han

      6 min read

    • Article

      After “The End”

      Oct 10, 2022

      I walked down the road with a hunched back and a wet cigarette in my mouth—the fire had died a while back. My hands were tucked into the pockets of my jacket, and my hair fell over my face, limiting my sight. But I wasn’t really seeing where I was go

      10 min read

    • Article

      Letters From The Pandemic

      Apr 27, 2020

      Letters From The Pandemic
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Space Between Us

      Oct 9, 2019

      The Space Between Us
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Parent’s Agony

      Aug 12, 2022

      When I read about Regina King’s only child taking his own life (YOU, 10 February) I could only imagine what pain she was going through as a parent. Little did I know that two months later on 25 April, I would receive a phone call from my daughter’s f

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Family Plot

      May 7, 2020

      The Family Plot
      10 min read

    • Article

      Diary of My Leg Hair

      Dec 8, 2022

      Diary of My Leg Hair
      21 min read

    • Article

      Up In Flames

      Jun 17, 2021

      Up In Flames
      5 min read

    • Article

      Freaks like Me

      Nov 19, 2020

      Freaks like Me
      5 min read

    • Article

      Sketchbook Of Secrets

      Jun 9, 2022

      Michelle Pujol, 43, Essex Sitting cross-legged on the living room floor after school, I giggled away as I watched my favourite cartoons. But as I heard the sound of footsteps behind me, my laughter suddenly stopped. ‘Come sit with me, ’ my stepdad wh

      2 min read

    • Article

      Head Start

      Jul 9, 2020

      It’s strange how one moment can change the rest of your life. For me, it was lying on the floor, looking up at the worried faces of my family. In that moment, I somehow knew that things would never be the same. Growing up, I’d always been quite an o

      5 min read

    • Article

      Little Gods

      Jan 8, 2020

      Little Gods
      8 min read

    • Article

      Unearthing the Personal

      Apr 10, 2023

      Unearthing the Personal
      4 min read

    • Article

      Announcing The winners Of Our FLASH CONTEST

      Feb 29, 2020

      I sever the first two fingers of my left hand on a Tuesday. They fall to the ground at my feet, causing a momentary confusion as I wonder what tree has dropped this odd fruit. Then I see the crescent scar left behind by a fish hook and know that thes

      8 min read

    • Article

      100-WORD-STORY COMPETITION Winners

      Aug 16, 2022

      We’ve been delighted by the huge response to our 100-word-story competition. The entries have flooded in thick and fast during the past few months, but while we’ve enjoyed reading every story, only a few can come out on top! You, our readers, voted t

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for One Breath Away

    4/5

    233 ratings46 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      A gunman enters a school in the small town of Broken Branch and no one knows who he is or what he wants. The story is told from the point of view of many different characters: a teacher and student inside the school, a police officer and grandparent outside the school, and a hostage's mother who is states away. At times the stories get a bit confusing - all of the townspeople are characters, and sometimes it's hard to remember who's who. The suspense, however, is incredibly well done. The story comes together piece by piece, and even though you may figure out who the gunman is a few pages for the big reveal, it's still a nice surprise.
    • 3/5
      Whilst I enjoyed this book it didn't have the action and suspense I was expecting. Instead there was a lot of back story which slowed the story down. The book unfolded through the eyes of five main characters, which I enjoyed, but what annoyed me was the fact that some were told in first person while others were in the third person. I would have preferred them being all one or the other. "One Breath Away" certainly wasn't a thriller, but an okay read for an extremely hot weekend, although I must say I found the ending lacking.
    • 4/5
      Heather Heather Heather! You did another awesome job with your newest book. I absolutely loved the story and the way it was written.

      The story is about a gunmen that goes into a school. Who is he? Why did he choose the classroom that he chose?

      You will find the answer to these questions and more by the end of the book. Each chapter features a character telling the story of what is happening at the same moment in time. I just love this style of writing that Gudenkauf uses. Just as the chapter is coming to an end and you are about to learn something huge we switch characters. OOOOOOOOHHHHHH, it works so well in keeping you in suspense and on the edge of your seat.

      Great book, great story telling and I highly recommend this to all.

      A heartfelt thank you to Net Galley and Mira Publishing for an "advanced readers copy". This book will be released on June 19, 2012
    • 3/5
      I continued reading this book because I was interested enough to see how it ended however I didn't really feel the suspense or the sense of relief that you hope to in a book about children being held hostage. I think this was partly due to the overwhelming number of characters introduced as well as the way the event was drawn out so much. In terms of action not a lot actually happened in the book and despite lots of information about the many characters few of them I could feel I could relate to. That said I did sympathize with Will's character and admired the teachers resilience. Overall it was an ok read.
    • 4/5
      I loved the structure and the pace of this book. It was difficult to put it down.
    • 2/5
      After reading the blurb I was excited about reading this book, but once I got into it I wasn't so impressed. Each chapter is told from a different characters perspective- I HATE THIS!!The story is jumbled all around with no clear idea on where the story is going. In the end it wasn't as good as what the blurb made it out to be.
    • 4/5
      In this book we meet Holly, a woman who grew up in small town Iowa but flew from there as fast as she could to get away from her parents and life on the farm. She is currently recovering from serious burns in the hospital and has sent her children back to the childhood home she swore she would never again enter. While there tragedy strikes as an armed man enters the school with an unknown agenda. In this day and age of school shootings it is every parent's nightmare and it is compounded for Holly as she cannot leave the hospital in Arizona to go to Iowa.The story plays out in bits and pieces from five separate points of view; Holly's, her daughter's, a police officers, a teacher's and Holly's father's. As each chapter moves forward we learn a bit about each character, a bit about the town and little drops of information about the crazy man with the gun.The character studies are quite interesting as each voice is completely unique and Ms. Gudenkauf keeps to different ways of expressing her characters upsets, back stories and emotions. It's a balancing act to be sure and one that is handled very well. As the book races towards its conclusion each voice remains distinct.Some questions are left unanswered at the end but the conclusion is satisfying and unexpected.I don't read many thrillers but I would certainly pick up another book by the author.
    • 5/5
      Wow, wow, wow! This book was very gripping! I loved the way the main characters had their own points of view as chapters. The whole plot was amazing. I can not think of one bad thing to say about this book. I'm definitely going to give Heather Gudenkauf's other books a read now as I believe she is a brilliant writer. This book is so emotional, and I would've never guessed the gunman's identity at the end. What a shocker!
    • 2/5
      The part about having nonstop hiccups was interesting, and that's all that was interesting. It would make a great magazine length article but whoever told the author that a book length version was gonna be great was wrong... Seriously wrong. Audiobook note : ok narrator, kinda sleepy.
    • 3/5
      One Breath Away takes place in Broken Branch, Iowa, and begins when an unknown man armed with a gun walks into an elementary school classroom. The story is told from the points of view of five characters: Holly Baker, her 13 year old daughter, Augie, her father, Will Thwaite, school teacher Evelyn Oliver, and police officer Meg Barrett. Each character recounts the stand-off between the police and the gunman from their own perspective, either inside the school or waiting for news on the outside.

      The chapters are short and the plot is rolled out with each character wondering who the man is and why has he targeted this school. Could he be a disgruntled former student, a parent in a nasty custody battle over a child, or is this just a random nut? For the most part it was a fast moving plot that didn't have any horrific scenes played out for drama. The small town atmosphere was very realistic.

      I have never read anything by this author but I would definitely try another. The story lacked the type of tension I enjoy in a suspense novel but it doesn't easily fit into that genre. I enjoyed seeing the action from the various perspectives and found it an engrossing read.
    • 2/5
      Not nearly as good as her other two books. The subject matter is sensationalism and the characters are poorly drawn. You don't hear enough of any one character's story to make you care about the situation they are in and by the end, you are just happy to know the identity of the mysterious gunman so you can move on to something else.
    • 3/5

      This was told by different people per chapter. We heard from Mrs. Oliver, Will, Meg, Holly and Augi.

      A stranger comes into a school and a lockdown takes place, this is the story told by a student, a teacher, an officer, a mom and a grandpa.

      I felt there was too much in this story that didn't need to be told. A few too many characters, that had no real purpose but to make you go who are they related to?

      This was one not as good as the first one I read by her.

    • 3/5
      a little too Jodi Picoult for me.
    • 5/5
      This is the suspenseful account of an emergency at a school in a rural community in the USA. Through short, punchy chapters, the story is told from the point of view of various characters: teachers and pupils being held hostage by a gunman, and those waiting for news outside. It is well written and very readable, the sort of thing you pick up and cannot put down. I was pretty sure I had guessed the identity of the guy with the gun, but the author had fooled me totally.
    • 4/5
      "We're always one breath away from something, living or dying, sometimes it just can't be helped." I didn't really get much out of Heather Gudenkauf's first novel, The Weight of Silence, but the premise of this one really appealed so I thought I'd give her another go. Happily, despite certain editorial issues, it actually succeeded in eliciting the suspense and forward momentum that The Weight of Silence promised but for me, never really delivered. It's one of those books that launches you straight into the action near the climax - a 13 year-old girl calls her mother from a closet to say that there's a gunman in the school, then shots are fired and the line goes dead - before rewinding to the very start of the drama. When an alert is sounded and the local school in the small town of Broken Branch goes into lockdown, the teachers have no idea whether this is a drill or the real deal - all they can do is take the necessary steps to keep themselves and their students safe. Only one teacher knows the truth, as her class of young children is held hostage by a gunman who seems to have deliberately chosen their room as his target. Meanwhile, outside in the snow, parents and grandparents wait anxiously for news, the police struggle to cope with the growing mob, and several states away a mother lies in her hospital bed unaware of the peril being faced by her two beloved children... Once again Gudenkauf uses a fast-changing narrative viewpoint to show how different individuals in a small-town community respond to a potentially devastating crisis. I didn't like her use of this device that much in The Weight of Silence because I found it distracting, but here she uses it to much greater effect, to explore characters' back stories and show us what's happening both inside and outside the school, gradually slotting pieces of the mystery into place as she goes. Her careful choice of voices helps lure the reader into an emotional web, in which we are invested in ALL of the key players and rooting for them every step of the way. Occasionally the back stories started to drag a bit and I found myself getting impatient to get back to what was happening inside the school - but mostly they just helped me to invest in the characters more deeply. I particularly liked the character of P.J., a little boy in the target classroom, though he's not one of the narrative voices (we see him mostly through the eyes of his sister Augie and his teacher, Mrs Oliver); other viewpoints include P.J. and Augie's grandfather, Will, and a female police officer called Meg. One thing that REALLY bugged me about this book - and the main reason it dropped a full star - was the editing. The novel really needs a good proofreader round it; I was tempted to start correcting things myself, it was so bad. Words were added in or missed out, sentence structure was often clunky (a semi-colon or twenty would have helped in that department), grammatical and spelling errors appeared on almost every page... it was really quite distracting at times. I expect the odd typo in a novel, no matter how famous the author and powerful the publishing house, but some of these slips were just shoddy and jerked me right out of the story on more than one occasion. ***SPOILER ALERT*** The other thing that bothered me was the ending. Although it was a relief, it was just a little bit too clean for me. Obviously I'm not a U.S. citizen, I don't have any experience with these situations and over here the only people you routinely see with guns are people like the armed police at the airport or the guards outside an army base. Maybe these things end cleanly and without loss of life all the time. But to me it just didn't seem realistic. A police officer goes into the building alone to confront the gunman, and her backup seems to be miles behind. All hostages escape alive, even the elderly teacher who has been cuffed around throughout the gunman's reign of terror in her classroom. The police officer attempts to shoot the gunman from a mere few feet away, MISSES the first time, and doesn't kill him the second even though shots have been fired towards children. REALLY? I don't know... like I said, I'm no expert, but it just seemed a bit too convenient to me, and though it's surely satisfying to think that a crazed gunman will have to live with his actions for the rest of his life, I can't imagine a trained police officer not shooting to kill when the lives of a bunch of young children are at stake. Maybe I've just watched too many cop movies? ***END OF SPOILER ALERT*** The bottom line? It was an enjoyable novel. The premise appealed to me, and I was hooked within the first couple of pages. I was invested in the characters and in how the lockdown was going to be resolved, I thought the rapid hopping between narrators worked very well this time, and I enjoyed both the gradual rounding out of the characters via their back stories, and the procedural elements as the people outside the school implemented each stage of the guidelines set in place to deal with a school intruder situation like this. It made me think about what I would do in each characters' shoes - always an interesting part of the reading experience - and drove home how much power you give someone, how skewed the odds instantly become, when you hand them a gun. The ending was a bit too... staged?... and Gudenkauf REALLY needs to get the whole book cleaned up to remove those hideous mistakes that litter her prose, but my opinion of her as an author has definitely gone UP and I'm now a lot more likely to read more of her work. Hopefully she'll just keep on getting better!
    • 3/5
      In a small town in Iowa, a gunman walks into a school during a snowstorm. He sets himself up in a classroom and calmly takes control. Outside, the policeforce mobilise, but due to the poor weather their numbers are small and extra reinforcements are not available. Anxious parents also gather. Inside the school, 12 year old Augie worries about her younger brother, trapped in the gunman's classroom. No one knows who the gunman is or what he wants.The book unfolds over the course of a single day and chapters move between the perspective of five characters: Augie, her mother Holly (in hospital in Arizona), her grandfather Will, Mrs Oliver (a teacher inside the school) and Meg, one of the policemen. The chapters are short - usually a few pages, sometimes only as a paragraph or two.I read most of the book in one setting so I suppose that suggests I loved it, but the truth is that I found it pretty slow going. There is not a lot of action and not a lot of suspense (though it does ramp up somewhat towards the end). There are a lot of back stories that have only negligible - if any - connection to the main plot. Most of it is treading water as the children wait for something to happen and the police on the outside try to identify the gunman. I know that there are many rapturous reviews out there but honestly, I didn't feel it. Heather Gudenkauf is compared to Jodi Picoult, but having recently read The Storyteller, I didn't feel that this book was nearly as complex or absorbing. It's okay, but that's all.
    • 2/5
      I was so excited when this book became available through PBS that as soon as I received it, I read it. I had read the other two books by this author and remember enjoying them. I was sadly disappointed in this book. Having worked through a school tragedy myself, I found the reaction of the characters unrealistic and sometimes downright silly. I thought that the book started off slowly and never really picked up pace. There was so much background information about the characters that took away from the premise of the story - it seemed to backfire and essentially kept me from connecting with any of the characters. With that said, there were some underlying storylines that I thought were left unfinished that having been addressed thoroughly would have added excitement to the story. It was very predictable - even determining who the gunman was was an easy task. I'm sorry to say that I wouldn't recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      Before I read this book I had heard comparisons of Gudenkauf's with Jodi Picoult's works. I must admit that was the main reason why I wanted to read this book in the first place. I am a big fan of Picoult, but I have to say Heather Gudenkauf's writing is a different world in itself.

      The book started off a bit slow - not a bad slow, but slow in the sense that she was letting us get familiar with the setting and characters for quite a while before moving on with the progression of the story. I was hooked by the writing. The alternating point of view did not put me off or disturbed the flow of the book for me. All the characters were flawed, but real. It was refreshing to read and I was constantly on the edge.

      This is my first book by the author, but I am pretty sure it will not be the only one. I liked the way she tackled the issues in the book and let the stories of all the different characters merge together. It was a subtle but compelling thriller and I absolutely loved it.

      A well deserved 5 stars!

      This ebook was provided to me by the publishers in exchange of an honest review
    • 3/5
      During a late spring snowstorm, just before spring break, a gunman walks into the school in a small Iowa town. Inside the locked-down classrooms and outside in the gathering snowstorm, questions fly as fast and furious as the snowflakes. Who is he? What does he want? Can anyone prevent the looming tragedy?Gudenkauf tells her story in short, staccato chapters that alternate viewpoints among a variety of characters staged in different places: There’s Meg, the police officer who may be closer to the mystery’s center than she realizes; Augie, the 14-year-old recent transplant from Arizona whose little brother P.J. is in the classroom occupied by the gunman; Mrs. Oliver, the teacher in P.J.’s classroom who is determined to protect her students even if it costs her her life; Will, Augie and P.J.’s grandfather, desperate not to lose the grandchildren he’s only just met; and Holly, mother of Augie and P.J., stuck in an Arizona hospital with severe burns after a kitchen accident.Gudenkauf uses the crisis situation to explore the dynamics of life in a small town. Holly couldn’t wait to leave Broken Branch in her rear-view mirror all those years ago, and was determined to never return or let her children meet their grandparents. I kept expecting a dramatic reveal of just what horror had been inflicted on her childhood to make her feel that way. It turns out her farmer dad … made her work on the farm? Really? That’s an extremely weak underpinning for the central relationships that are supposed to drive the story. And it’s emblematic of the essential problems in the book as a whole: The entire setup is dramatic and fraught with tension, but every potential powder keg seems to fizzle when the fuse is lit. Part of the problem is the dizzying nature of the super-short chapters and the whiparounds from character to character. Too many times the chapters barely advanced the story and seemed to serve only as a means to create an air of forced suspense. I give Gudenkauf credit for coming up with a surprising answer to the “who is the gunman and what does he want” question, but by then I was just a little bit bored with the story. Bored with a story about a gunman in a school? That’s no author’s idea of a happy ending.On the personal side, I was fascinated by the location of the story, living as I do in Iowa (check), about an hour from Waterloo (check), in a small town (check), whose name contains the word Branch (check). It was mildly interesting to imagine that the story might have been set in my town, although the setting doesn’t really align in the end (this town has three separate school buildings for elementary, middle, and high schools, while the town in the book has a single K-12 school building). I learned from a Q&A with the author at the end of the e-book that she graduated from the University of Iowa (and was a student there when the campus suffered its own mass shooting tragedy in 1991), so she certainly knows the area well enough to make it believable. It’s a pity the book didn’t quite live up to its early promise.
    • 4/5
      Reviewed by: AprilBook provided by: Contest win at Revolving BookcaseReview originally posted at Romancing the BookAn amazingly gripping and shell shocking read, One Breath Away by Heather Gudenkauf is a story that rings true in today’s society and is one that will not leave this reader’s mind for some time.We live in a world where we have to be on alert constantly. There are people out there that care less for the lives of others and see those lives as disposable. The world we live in today is one of greed and immorality and a place where even the innocence of our children can be ripped away in a heartbeat. One Breath Away is this story. This is a story of a man set on revenge and without conscience, who will harm those who gets in his way without a second thought.Ms. Gudenkauf writes her story from the POV of five of the main characters within the story. Holly, a mother of two wonderful children who is in the hospital recovering from severe burns from an accident; Augie, Holly’s daughter; Mrs. Oliver a teacher at the school where Augie and her brother, P.J. attend; Will, Augie’s Grandfather and Holly’s Father and Meg, one of the town’s Police Officers. If not done correctly, all of these POV changes could easily have been disastrous; however this is not the case. The changes are seamless and truly lend to the effect of the story.One Breath Away begins in such a captivating way that it truly grabbed me from the very beginning and beckoned me to continue reading. I became emotionally involved with each of these characters; gripping the book from tension and feeling my heart skip in anxiety and nervousness. Being a mother of two younger children, myself, both school-aged, I could relate to the terror of such a thing happening. Gut-wrenching and soul searing to the extreme.Within this story, the author takes us into each of the main character’s lives – using flashbacks of past occurrences that make the characters the people they are, incidents that shaped them into the individuals that will affect how they handle the terror of what happens when a school is taken hostage one snow-stormy day in a small town of Iowa. I think that my favorite character would have to be Augie. She is so strong and courageous, unwilling to leave her younger brother behind to save herself. Augie will do anything to protect him and her countless selfless acts endured me strongly to her.Told in vivid detail, One Breath Away is a story filled with twists and turns and several surprises. I honestly thought that I had the gunman figured out several times, only to read a few pages later that I was totally and completely wrong – not to mentioned shocked with the reason that I was wrong. I loved how the author was able to do this. Heather Gudenkauf has an incredible talent which shines through in One Breath Away. The flow of the story was excellent, the detail and character development was wonderful and the fact that she has written a story that truly focuses on the truth of society makes this a gripping story that many readers will be able to relate to on many different levels. I cannot wait to read more works by this author and highly recommend One Breath Away to anyone looking for a true-to-life type of story that will hold them captive from the first page until the last.
    • 3/5
      A brief, vaguely interesting story of a hostage situation at a small town school. Told by many perspectives, the narration seemed overly simple.
    • 2/5
      For those of you who don't know, some audiobooks include a bit of music. Not all the way through or anything, but at the very beginning and end. One Breath Away actually has music at the opening and closing of each disc. The music has a creepy sound, and seems like theme music for some sort of crime drama program. This fits One Breath Away perfectly, because it definitely felt more like a made for television movie than a serious consideration of a gunman taking over a school.

      The topic, of course, inherently involves a lot of drama, fear and creepiness. The fact that a man with a gun would decide that the best way to make whatever point he has to make is to enter a school and take some children as hostages really freaks me out, mostly because it doesn't necessarily have to do with the children at all; they are merely innocent victims of a madman. Basically, this subject matter has plenty of natural intensity and shock value without adding additional sob stories into the mix.

      Gudenkauf tells this story using multiple third person limited narratives. The first is a mother, Holly, recuperating slowly in a hospital. In the meantime, her children, Augie and PJ have been sent to live with her estranged her father, while her mother sits at her bedside. How was she injured? In a grease fire, and she was injured to an insane degree. Not only that, but the fire was inadvertently caused by Augie, who never apologized before this incident.

      The second perspective is Augie's. Because of the guilt over her accidentally wounding her mother, when the school gets locked down, Augie decides she won't leave without PJ. Her class escapes early on, but she decides to stay and look for PJ, who's in the classroom with the gunman. Holly's perspective existed solely to add an extra level of sadness to this story, which really was not necessary. Why not make her any other mother, waiting outside the school? No matter the family situation, any relatively caring mother will be frozen with fear until she finds out her kids are safe; other than pure melodrama value, there's no reason to have her be gravely injured, at risk of ruining her skin grafts. Maybe that wasn't Gudenkauf's intention, but it detracted from the believability of the book for me.

      The third perspective, and the only male one, is Will, Holly's father. He and Holly have not talked since she left home as a teen, sick of the farm and of Iowa and of her dad who cared more about cows than his child. Will spends his time worrying about everyone, rightly so, but also stumbling into crucial information regarding the case and saving people. Again, this had a sort of cinematic feel to it, more than might necessarily be going down in real life. Oh, also, there was a crazy snow storm too.

      Our fourth perspective is Meg, a police officer. Her daughter would have been in the school, but she left before the last day to spend the weekend with her father, from whom Meg is divorced. Both Meg and Holly have a very powerful feminist attitude towards sex, though they seem to look down on themselves for it a bit, which is unfortunate. Their lives parallel somewhat, but more could have been made of that.

      Rounding out the story is Mrs. Oliver, the so-close-to-retiring teacher of the hostage class. She does try very hard for the kids, but I had trouble accepting that a no-nonsense teacher like she is described to be would confront the gunman in some of the highly stupid ways she does. The reader also gets a lot of back story on Mrs. Oliver that, I personally did not find useful to the plot or interesting.

      The audiobook version should have made their characters come more alive for me, but, sadly, that was not the case. I really did not like any of the narrators voices, though Meg was better than the rest. For one thing, they all had a really annoying accent, which I guess must be an Iowan accent for authenticity, but, whatever it is, I would have been happier without it. The worst performance has to be the one for Augie, as the narrator used a really obnoxious trying-to-sound-like-a-child voice, which skewed too young for eighth grader Augie and made her sound incredibly dumb.

      Looking at Goodreads, I can see that there are 3000 plus ratings for this, most of them four and five stars. Listening to an audio can be a very different experience, so, perhaps, had I read this I would have liked it more. I really cannot say. If you're curious, look at some other reviews or try the book yourself, preferably in print unless you love the Iowa accent, before writing it off.
    • 2/5
      Although I think the premise behind the book is good, I had a hard time going back and forth from the different perspectives of all the charactors. It held my interest especially with all the school shootings, but maybe limit how many people are telling the story. It does keep you guessing as I did not figure out who the shooter was until it was revealed.
    • 5/5
      I ordered this book and when it arrived, I was unable to read the story of a school lock-down because of the Sandy Hook killings. Finally, I took it on and I'm glad I did. Heather Gudenkauf is a new author to me and I will read all of her books now. Told by several children and adults, the story avoids being gruesome by letting the reader see the lock-down from several angles and provides a nice character study. Not a downer at all, I highly recommend One Breath Away.
    • 4/5
      A story about a gunman who enters a school and holds the children and teacher hostage, This book was a page turner.
    • 5/5
      Debated on reading this with the world being what it is but she really roped me in and made me care. Recommended this to my school teacher daughter. A must read.
    • 4/5
      "One Breath Away" by Heather Gudenkauf is about a gunman who enters an elementary school in a small town and holds the kids hostage. The story is narrated through the teacher in the classroom, Evelyn Oliver, the cop whose daughter goes to that school, Meg, the grandfather who recently put his two kids in the school, and his 13 year old granddaughter. On top of it all, they are unable to get outside help due to a snowstorm.I liked the story. It was interesting to see how people were reacting to the situation: the teacher who wants to protect her students at any cost, the cop whose daughter would have been in that classroom if she hadn't decided to let her go see her dad a day early, the grandfather who promised to protect his grandchildren while their mother is recovering from a serious accident, and the 13 year old who has an attitude but is willing to do what is needed to protect her younger brother.
    • 5/5
      Don't start unless you want to do nothing but reading til you finish. I am only half way through. I took a quick break and will go right back. This is a good book.
    • 4/5
      One Breath Away is an emotional novel about how a community deals with a horrific act. The story takes place on a snowy day in a small town in Iowa on the last school day before Spring break. A gunman has entered the school and as word gets out, horrified parents are pooled outside along with police and reporters. Most of the town's children up through age eighteen are held captive inside, since the school condenses grades k-12. To make matters worse, a blizzard is in full effect and the extra police help needed may not even make it in time.At first, due to the subject matter, I didn't know how I would fare reading this book.I wondered "why am I doing this to myself?" as I read. This book is emotional to say the least, and more so because I am a mother of two.Author Heather Gudenkauf really drew me in and I found myself unable to put this book down for the first hundred pages or so. The book is told from a few different points of view. Police officer and mother Meg, grandfather Will, third grade teacher Mrs Oliver and eight grade student Augie, are some of the characters that we see the story through.The characters are well developed and as they narrate, we get flashbacks and their previous memories. I have to mention, I had a hard time telling the two moms Holly and Meg apart. Since the book switches back and forth from different narrators, I had to keep checking to see which mom was which. One mother is a cop, the other is lying in a hospital bed, but I still found myself mixing them up.Eight grader Augie gives up the chance at freedom as some of the children are able to sneak out of the school, but because her little brother P.J. is still somewhere inside, she refuses to leave him. Moments like these invested me in the story and its characters.The gunman winds up in Mrs. Oliver's third grade classroom and as she tries to bargain with him in order to try and protect her students, I got the chills reading. She thinks back on her forty years of teaching and swears she will not die on this day. Speaking of Mrs. Oliver, I liked her character the most. Especially when she wears a tacky bedazzled denim dress that one of her students gifted her, just to please her student.About halfway through the book, I felt the story lost its momentum a bit. The scenes from inside the school were suspenseful, especially from Mrs. Oliver's point of view since the gunman was in her classroom. However, in between the flashbacks and the trying to figure out the gunman's identity, my interested began to stray.Once the mid read hump passed, I couldn't put this book down again, I just had to know how it would all end. When the gunman's identity was revealed, I did think it was a bit of a far stretch. For some reason, it just didn't sit well with me. I have to say, for a story with this type of premise, it all ends well.Upon reading more about the author I learned that she was on campus at her university one day when a gunman entered a classroom and shot several students then killed himself. This tragic event moved her to write this emotional story. I teared up a bit as I read some scenes, mostly because of the children. I think that's the mark of a good author, one that will evoke emotion in a reader. Although I had some issues with One Breath Away, I still enjoyed it overall.This is a tense and heavy read and I recommend it if you're looking for a story that will affect you as you turn the pages. All in all, I enjoyed Heather Gudenkauf's style of writing and her storytelling was intriguing. I would definitely want to read this author again.
    • 4/5
      It was my first novel from New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf that I read. What happens when a man enters a school in a place in Iowa on a cold winter day and takes a class and their teacher into hostage, without explicit demands? One Breath Away explores the family ties, suspicions about possible actors and victims, the actions and movements in and outside the school building. The composition is brilliant. Instead of a whodunnit crime fiction setup, time gets by through the lenses of all involved. They all tell snippets from their viewpoints in short chapters. As a reader you’re constantly aware of actually not much happening, though the tension of the outcome of this story stays to the last page.Meet Holly in the hospital bed, lucky to be absent from school. What will her father Will, armed and eager to save his grandchildren Augie & P.J. do in school? Is it a father looking for his children? Augie’s dad? Will the teacher, mrs. Evelyn Oliver be brave enough to be remembered about her rescue, or will she fail? And what’s the role of Meg Barrett, a local police officer trying to resuce her daughter? Without revealing the whole plot, I’d definitely recommend reading this beautiful woven tapestry of thoughts and immobility, one breath away from either a successful rescue or a tragedy. The book contains questions for your reading group to unearth hidden motives and points to relate to your personal circumstances, plus an interview with the author and a preview of These Things Hiden.