The Flower Girls by Alice Clark-Platts

The Flower Girls by Alice Clark-Platts
Published in: 2018
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: [★★★]

This ARC was provided by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis from Goodreads: YOU’LL NEVER FORGET THE FLOWER GIRLS

The Flower Girls. Laurel and Primrose.

One convicted of murder, the other given a new identity.

Now, nineteen years later, another child has gone missing.

And The Flower Girls are about to hit the headlines all over again…

Book Worm’s Thoughts: This is another case of it’s me not the book, this is actually a well written interesting psychological thriller the problem for me is the story is just too close to home. The events echo what happened to James Bulger in 1993 and while the characters and events are different enough that this is not a retelling of that horrific murder they are still too close for me to feel comfortable reading this as entertainment.

The author does raise some interesting points regarding the legal system with regard to how children are treated compared with adults for the same crime, it questions whether an 18 year old who has spent almost half their life in prison is the same person as the 10 year old convicted of the crime. It also considers how can someone reintegrate into society if they were never actually a functioning member of it to begin with.

Other issues examined are the idea of forgiveness and moving on no matter what horrors you have suffered. The protection of the families of the criminals while the victims family have no protection as the worst has already happened to them. The idea of nature vs nurture and is it possible that some people are just born evil with no redeeming features and should be locked away forever.

Who would like this: Trigger Warnings for child torture and murder (although this is not graphically portrayed) personally I can’t recommend this to anyone old enough to remember the James Bulger case maybe younger readers would be able to read this with no issue.

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