Book Review: WHEN I WAS TEN by Fiona Cummins

 

Title: WHEN I WAS TEN

Author:  Fiona Cummins

Read: July 2021

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!

 

Book Description:

 

Everyone remembered Sara and Shannon Carter, the little blonde haired sisters. Their Dad was the local GP and they lived in the beautiful house on the hill. Their best friend, Brinley Booth, lived next door. They would do anything for each other but everything shifted on that fateful day when Dr Richard Carter and his wife Pamela were stabbed fourteen times with a pair of scissors in what has become the most talked about double murder of the modern age.

The girls were aged ten and twelve at the time. One, nicknamed the Angel of Death, spent eight years in a children’s secure unit accused of the brutal killings. The other lived in foster care out of the limelight and prying questions. Now, on the anniversary of the trial, a documentary team has tracked down one of the sisters, persuading her to speak about the events of that night for the first time.

Her explosive interview sparks national headlines and Brinley Booth, now a journalist, is tasked with covering the news story which brings to light fresh evidence and triggers a chain of events which will have devastating consequences.

My musings:

 

Woah, that was intense! I can’t believe how underrated this dark and twisted thriller is. It was an excellent read, definitely one of the most disturbing and gripping I have read this year, and I couldn’t put it down before I had all the answers.

 

One of the secrets of a gripping thriller is to offer us characters who may be flawed, but who quickly worm their way into our psyche, if not our hearts. Cummins has a unique way of introducing her characters, through seemingly disjointed and yet utterly captivating and graphic images in the opening scenes that might not make much sense until much later, when we have met the full cast and had a chance to look into their past. Here is Brinley, a journalist struggling to get a big scoop to keep her career going. And Catherine, who is hiding a dark secret from her own family, one that is about to catch up with her. How are these women connected? We are about to get a look into both women’s pasts, and all the missing pieces are going slot into place, one by one, revealing a dark and disturbing picture.

 

What do we know from the beginning? We hear about the Hilltop Murders, the brutal stabbing of Dr and Mrs Carter by their own young daughter. What compels a child to kill? I feel that I should give you fair warning that parts of that story make for difficult reading. But I am trying not to give spoilers, so I will leave it at that. Let’s just say that the story rolls out in two separate timelines, one in the present and one in the time leading up to the infamous Hilltop Murders, until both intersect in a twist that made me gasp out loud.

 

Cummins is a master at building suspense, and at bringing her characters to life, whilst still maintaining an air of secrecy that built suspense to almost unbearable levels, to a point where I could not tear myself away. She has also mastered those most difficult aspects of a thriller that covers two timelines: to make each of them equally compelling, and to make her child characters seem genuine and age-appropriate. The clues are slowly revealed in the same way that leisurely peeling an onion sooner or later makes you cry (let me warn you that you may feel sadness and rage as this particular tale unfolds), with a few twists thrown in to prove that you’re not that clever a detective. Each character has something to hide, but doesn’t blatantly fool the reader to a point where you feel cheated. All this may not sound like much, but as a seasoned thriller reader I can tell you that it’s a balancing act as fine as crossing a great ravine on a tightrope – it doesn’t take much to knock you over the edge.

 

With writing that flowed seamlessly and a rich cast of characters so richly drawn that they took on a life all of their own, the story had me firmly in its grip from page 1. I loved the way Cummins managed to include some social commentary into her story by including a minister for justice into her tale, whose role highlighted the failings of the justice system for juvenile offenders. It was a clever element that prompted reflection without coming across as preaching or political. In fact, some elements of this dark tale strayed from the well trodden path of your average crime read, and made the story all the richer for it.

 

 

Summary:

 

All in all, without giving anything away, WHEN I WAS TEN was the sort of book that keeps you up reading late into the night and then follows you into your nightmares. With a richly drawn cast of characters who all had dark secrets to hide, the slow peeling away of layers ultimately revealed a story so dark and heart wrenching that it will stay in my mind for a long time to come. WHEN I WAS TEN was one of the most compelling thrillers I have read all year, and whilst it didn’t make for easy reading due to some of the context matter, it had me utterly in its grip from beginning to end. I highly recommend it to lovers of dark, multi-layered and utterly compelling thrillers that still manage to surprise you in the end.