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.
Great review. This has been on my wishlist for a while
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