I was absolutely drawn into this book from the second I picked it up and finished it in a matter of hours.

The story is written in three parts and from the perspectives of two of the children, both when they are grown and when they are children. It's a really excellent study I think in how the past shapes your future and influences behaviour - especially when that behaviour is murdering a parent!

Well written (although a few too many instances of the use of the word 'freighted' in my opinion!), I enjoyed both perspectives and could hear the voices of the different characters. It wasn't perfect score for me, but if I could give it a 4.5 out of 5 I would.

Would recommend for anyone fond of a thriller that is a bit of a slow burn. Thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the opportunity to read and to find a new author.

This was my first Fiona Cummins book and it will not be my last.
The story starts in 1997 with the brutal murder of 2 parents and a girl fleeing the scene.
Its 1997. Sara and Shannon are sisters and together with their next-door neighbour Brinley Booth, they are all best friends. The parents of the two girls are respected in the community but we learn that not all is as it seems. Richard and Pamela are evil and cruel parents and one night they are both stabbed. Sara was convicted and sentence 14 years for murder.
It’s 2018, Sara is now called Catherine and has a new life free from her haunting past. Until a news article jolts her back into the past, to her previous identity, as her life is turned upside down.
Brinley is now a journalist and goes back to the hometown to cover this story with the aim of squashing her own involvement.
This is a gripping suspense thriller with what feels like a unique story-line.

When I Was Ten by Fiona Cummings
*The Carter sisters are systematically abused by their parents despite presenting to the world a perfect upper class family.
*Catherine leads a normal life with her husband and child before the past comes back to break apart the life she has built.
*A low level news reporter, Brinley, lives with her Aunt whilst trying to keep her head down and deliver good stories.
**All three stories come crashing together in this physiological thriller which is dark, picks up pace and delivers a tense conclusion.

This book is well written, with the differing stories and timelines being excellently interwoven to provide a gripping thrill ride. It is emotive, you feel pity for the characters in each thread and abject horror at some of the trials the young Carter sisters endure.
All in all, a solid thrilling read.
4*

I really enjoyed this book - a great thriller with a few shocks along the way. The first big twist came only a third of the way into the book which made me keen to devour the rest and find out what would happen.

Without spoilers - this book both tugs at the heart strings and makes you enraged in equal measures. I thought the plot was well thought out and executed brilliantly. I would not hesitate to buy further books by Fiona Cummins and I'm so grateful to netgalley for this arc.

This is my first Fiona Cummins book and what a rollercoaster it is!

It’s a story told in two time frames: the present and 20+ years ago. It centres around a young girl who murders her parents in the middle of the night witnessed by her sister and friend. Years later the girl has grown up, got a new identity and a new life but the past catches up with her and her family (old and new)

I really enjoyed this story and will definitely look out for more of the authors works.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the advance copy to read!

This was my first Fiona Cummins book and it definitely won't be the last one! Surprising, thrilling and very engrossing, «When I Was Ten» was such a fun and quick read.

Dr Richard Carter and his wife Pamela are brutally murdered by one of their daughters. Sara goes on to spend 8 years in a secure children’s unit and her sister, Shannon, is placed in foster care. Fast forward to the present and Shannon is wanting to reconnect with her sister. This book is full of clever twists and turns and Cummins has total control throughout. I really enjoyed the story being told not only from the perspectives of Sara and her friend Brinley, but also from other minor characters. Cummins deftly navigates the transition between characters and time periods.

This was such an intense, compelling and sometimes really uncomfortable read, especially in its portrayal of what can go on behind closed doors. I was gripped from beginning to end. Cummins is obviously a very accomplished thriller writer and I’m looking forward to catching up with some of her other books.

Thank you to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for my ARC

Wow wow wow! I think I found a book that's brought back my reading mojo, When I Was Ten is brilliant. It kept me gripped from the get go as we figured out what happened in the Carter household that fateful evening. I sat and read 50% of it in one sitting, it was that good! If you want a thriller type book to sink your teeth into, this is definitely the one! The writing style and transitions between the past and present were superb 👌🏼. I loved this book!

My first book by this author and it certainly won't be the last. This book was packed full of twists and turns, my heart broke for Sara Shannon and Brindley, they all suffered so much. I enjoyed the glimpses of the past mixed with the present. Was not expecting the end. Great book thank you for the advanced copy.

Great book which will keep you guessing to the very end, i couldn't put this book down and i look forward to reading more by this author.

Struggled a little bit to get into this but only for a chapter or two and then it was a brilliant murder mystery suspense book. 3 main characters all interweaved in each others lives in a whodunit kind of book. Really recommend.

This is a well written thriller about a woman trying to escape her past. Fiona Cummins is an accomplished writer and it shows in the way this story is cleverly woven.

Catherine is a wife and mother with a family history that she’s kept from her husband and daughter. That is until something happens to start the unravelling.

I found it a compelling read and can recommend as a strong 3* Good Read

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to preview.

Children that Kill - WOW

What possesses a child to kill their own parents!

1997 Shannon and Sara are totally mistreated by the Carters cannot even call them Mum and Dad but Patricia and Richard. Best friend Brinley witnesses some of the tormentments and it is so cruel.

2018 Catherine is about to be exposed to what happened all those years ago.

I really enjoyed this, it was well written and had me gripped throughout.

I would of liked to had more of Sara's side to see why she was so mental.

I couldn't work out why MP Geoffrey had been made part of the plot which could of easily been left out, I didn't really get his goings ons but there was some OMG moments.

Overall well worth a read I thought it was great.

Thank you Pan Macmillan and netgalley for the opportunity to review.

This is the first Fiona Cummins book that I’ve read and I will certainly now go back and read her previous titles. I saw this author during the lockdown #LockedUpFestival at the start of July and was struck by her humour and generous storytelling so was keen to try one of her books. And it didn’t disappoint. Not that this book is at all humorous.. It would be hard to put too much humour in a story inspired by the actions of real life child killers such as Mary Bell.

The story grabs the reader from the start. Within the first few paragraphs you know that “the grown ups are dead”, lies have been told - or rather one great big whopper - and the prologue literally ends with a bolt of lightning. It’s a great tale - past narrative interwoven with the present day as we are slowly led up to what happened way back when, and how our protagonists find themselves face to face with danger 20 years later. It wasn’t too long before the book became the proverbial page turner.

It focuses on the relationship of two young sisters (Sara aged just 10 and Shannon 12) and their neighbour/best friend Brinley, on the closeness of their relationship, on the cruelty they face within the home, on the events that occur in each household that end in death, and on the repercussions of their actions in later life.

The characters as adults each have their own demons to battle. They’ve managed to push these away with different degrees of success in the intervening years but it’s welcoming to see that they do possess the moral strength needed to face them head on when the time comes. I felt for the characters too. One has struggled to move on from the events whilst another has formed a new life albeit with eggshells constantly under foot.

The only misstep I found was a subplot involving a less than honourable politician. Perhaps interesting in the current climate but his role in the story arc, although key, could have been explained in a paragraph or two.

All in all a great read - one to recommend.

With thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the ARC.

Sara and Shannon Carter, young children who suffer child abuse at the hands of their parents. Witnessed by their close friend Brinley; who is also dealing with her own family traumas.

One night, the Carter children sneak into their parents bedroom and stab them 14 times with a pair of scissors.

The story is told from the viewpoint Of both Sara (aka Catherine a new name) and by Brinley.

Shannon reaches out publicly wanting to reconcile with her sister who she is now estranged.
Brinley, a journalist who is also chasing them down for the next exclusive.

The book flips between present and past. The young girls, and the adults they became.
I do enjoy books written in this narrative, 2 view points, 2 points in time. It’s a good way of maintaining the suspense.

I’m conflicted in my opinion on this book - it has all the hallmarks of it being a page-Turner; but in reality I struggled with it. The descriptive writing I found inspiring - and I would read the paragraphs over, as I enjoyed the imagination and comparison.
However the plot was somewhat ok... it could’ve been better. I found there were gaps, and then those gaps were filled with poorly filled reasoning and disposable excuses, like an after thought.
There’s a couple of twists in the book, which keep you interested, but the final twist is unnecessary and I feel out in there for a jaw dropping reaction - which didn’t happen.
I must say that although I struggled with the first ‘third’ of this book; after that I became absorbed in it - and enjoyed it. Until the last 10% which then became a little ‘unbelievable and reaching’ for my liking...

This is the first Fiona Cummins book I’ve read. I will read a couple more before making a decision on whether to continue going forward

Thank you Netgalley for my free ARC book in ret n for an open and honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. The start of the story with the abuse of the girls was so real. I was angry and upset for them and didn’t care so much about the killing of the parents because I almost felt they deserved it! The way the story was written with flashbacks to the girls’ childhood was well done and not at all confusing. The only part I didn’t love was the MPs story. I’m still confused how it fitted in to the main story. I think it could easily be taken out and the story read just as well

“We rode our bikes everywhere, the Carter sisters and I. Until the murders, and then I stopped being a child and became a liar.”

With more twists than a corkscrew and a sizzlingly paced narrative, this story of murder, secrets and lies had my jaw hitting the floor like a jackhammer.

The plot is genius. A child killer, a double murder, a sister seeking reconciliation, a journalist hunting down the scoop of her life. As Cummins expertly weaves her tale, she coaxes you into making assumptions, then blows them out of the water in small explosive bursts that leave you almost speechless with disbelief. Then just when you think it’s all over, she hits you with a final twist that is utterly, utterly brilliant.

The characters are convincing and the story scarily plausible: the lies told in innocence, the misplaced loyalties, the secrets held close for two decades. And while parts of the narrative are sinister and disturbing, they are necessarily so. All the plot elements hold together beautifully to make this one of the best psychological thrillers I’ve read in years.

With thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the ARC.

At first I thought I‘d read a very similar book before and therefore knew the ‘twist‘, so I was contemplating putting this book down. I kind of did know the twist, but this was so well-written I couldn‘t put it down.

When they were 10 and 12 Sara and Shannon‘s parents were killed by one of the sisters, following a lifetime of abuse. Secrets were hidden for years but are now coming out into the open.

We find out the current-day implications for the sisters and their former best friend Brinley, and then go back to find out what actually happened on that day so many years ago.

My only niggle is that I don't really understand the relevance of the MP to the story (other than revealing some confidential details) - that whole storyline could quite easily have been left out with the information coming from another source.

Addictive reading from start to finish. Wow- this book had me hooked and I have had to read it within a day just to know the ending. I loved the twists- so many that I really didn’t see coming despite knowing the book had some from glancing at other reviews. It felt so real, some of the story was hard to stomach. The parts explaining the girls childhood was raw and painful to read, I felt so strongly for those girls -A sign of fantastic writing from the author. I’m sure this book will be a huge success, the fact I had to stop for a minute, take a breath and think over all I had just read after finishing is a sure sign of a truly engaging read.

I have just this minute finished reading this utterly gripping, enthralling book. It's very dark and filled with the terrible things some people do to each other. But it's also so good, well written, totally compelling.