Thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
#WhenIWasTen #NetGalley

Oh my. Unless my reading tastes change drastically in the coming year, When I Was Ten will be one of my top 10 thrillers of 2020... or should that be of all time?. What a book!. Fiona Cummings has written one of the most darkly compelling and atmospheric thrillers I have had the pleasure to read in the past few years. In this novel, Cummins taps into the uncomfortable and morally ambiguous nature of childhood culpability in the cultural zeitgeist of post-Jamie Bulger debates about the nature of the child and the social constructedness of childhood innocence. If that sounds dry, then let me reassure you it is anything but. This is a compelling tale of the murders of Dr Richard Carter and his wife Pamela by one of their pre-teen daughters, Sara. Flitting between past and present in her narrative, Cummins bestows the status of voyeur on the reader, providing us with a glimpse into the less than picture-perfect life of the Carter family and the ensuing convulsions that followed the murder of the less-than-good doctor and his wife. But this is more than a straightforward tale of crime, with Cummins pointedly eschewing the simple boundaries of good and evil and innocence and guilt within the context of the hysteria that surrounds the child-killer. It exposures the contradictions in our understandings of children and childhood; the natural innocence of 'the child' and the exceptional vitriol, when compared to adult killers, Western culture shows towards children who confound these powerful expectations. Wrapped in a thriller-like format, there are obvious perils to engaging with such a sensitive subject; not least the easy resort to the tub thumping caricatures of child-killers as grotesque monsters - anomalies of nature, generated by a sensationalist media. Not for Cummins and not for this book. She deals with this subject with great humanity and exceptional empathy and most importantly, the ever present possibility of redemption. Need I not forget also, that this is a corker of read that is unrelenting in its sheer addictiveness. You will read this in one sitting but savour every page, because a novel like When I was Ten does not come along often, if ever....

Very clever and very well written!! Fully enjoyed this one and was read in one sitting!! Cannot wait to read more from this author !!

#WhenIWasTen #NetGalley
A fun read.
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. But an incident changed everything.
A clever thriller with a flawless narration and creepy characters.
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan for giving me an advanced copy of this suspense thriller.