It was my absolute privilege to ‘stay in with Fiona Cummins to celebrate publication day for her latest book All Of Us Are Broken. You’ll find that post here.

I also featured All Of Us Are Broken in My Weekly’s July Special Edition and am very much looking forward to interviewing Fiona at the Deepings Literary Festival next year.

Now, at last, I’m catching up with blogging some outstanding reviews and it’s my absolute pleasure to share my review of All Of Us Are Broken today.

Published by Pan Macmillan on 20th July 2023, All Of Us Are Broken is available for purchase through the links here.

All Of Us Are Broken

The electrifying crime novel featuring DS Saul Anguish from the award winning author, Fiona Cummins, author of Into the Dark and Rattle.

Every one of them has a dark secret

The Family

After a year they want to forget, the Hardwicke family set out to the Scottish Highlands for a much needed holiday.

The Crimes

They are about to cross paths with Missy and Fox, a violent and dangerous young couple hell-bent on infamy, their love story etched in blood and a dark past which must be uncovered.

The Detective

As the clock ticks down, Detective Saul Anguish is on the hunt to find the couple before more lives are lost.

The Mother – who will be forced to make an impossible decision.

My Review of All Of US Are Broken

Christine has a choice to make.

All Of Us Are Broken is, quite simply, stunning. It’s dark, daring and dramatic, and in All Of Us Are Broken Fiona Cummins writes brutality with a beauty that is both awe inspiring and terrifying. Descriptions are vivid and painterly with a cinematic quality I found breath-taking. I wasn’t reading a narrative here, but rather I was with the characters watching the action.

The text is scorching with desire, vibrating with emotion and simultaneously attracts and repels the reader until they have no free will of their own. It’s such a relief to have the three separate strands of the story because each adds balance and light and shade to the narrative, providing relief when the reader feels they cannot take the intensity a moment longer. 

Indeed, the plot of All Of Us Are Broken is astonishing. The timed chapters add a pace that is compelling so that the pages of the story fly past. Reading this narrative is to set aside your own free will and become consumed by the story. All Of Us Are Broken is violent and disturbing, but utterly believable in every point and filled with sensitivity and human understanding.

What feels so unsettling and so disturbing is the fact that Missy and Fox commit the most awful crimes and yet the reader can’t help feeing invested in them. This is most uncomfortable a sensation. What Fiona Cummins does so well is to consider morality, light and shade, and the reasons for her characters’ actions with incredible dexterity, understanding and compassion so that the most evil are understandable and the most benevolent have a darkness lurking that is terrifying. Placed in Christine’s shoes I have absolutely no idea how I would respond. 

The themes of family, grief, the need to belong and receive approbation, duty and desire make All Of Us Are Broken a narrative that is experienced almost physically rather than read. 

I thought All Of Us Are Broken was absolutely stunning; it’s beautifully written, viscerally impactful and simply not to be missed. It’s an absolute triumph.

About Fiona Cummins

Fiona Cummins is an award-winning former journalist and a graduate of the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course. Rattle, her debut novel, was the subject of a huge international auction and has been translated into several languages. It received widespread critical acclaim from authors and reviewers. She has since written bestsellers The Collector, The Neighbour, When I Was Ten and Into the Dark in which she introduces DC Saul Anguish, a brilliant young detective with a dark past. Fiona lives with her family in Essex.

For further information, follow Fiona on Twitter @FionaAnnCummins and find her on Instagram.