Megan Walsh is running for her life, but only so that she can end it as she chooses and not by the hands of them.
She escaped her children's home after being raped by one of her care workers only to be found by Jo, the one adult she once dared to trust
Jo learns that Meg is the victim of a Child Sexual Exploitation gang whose tentacles reach far and wide within the police force, social care and all the way to Parliament.
In a gripping race against time, Meg fights off terrifying flashbacks while attempting to identify her attackers before they can find her and silence her forever.
Meg suffers from severe mental and physical repercussions of her abuse whilst struggling to trust Jo and her husband. Then, when their children come home from university at Christmas, Meg has to deal with an added layer of chaos, surprising hilarity, mood-lifting laugh-out-loud moments, and
something she has never known, a family.
Paradigm is a fast-paced, character-driven, edge-of-your-seat story that has the reader guessing until the very end.
Trigger warning: The book contains one detailed self-harm scene, along with recounts of sexual assault and flashbacks.
Industry Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
'This is a gut-punch of a novel'
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 November 2021
Verified Purchase
What an amazing book! Meg's story grabbed me from the start. This is a gut-punch of a novel, written so carefully and so well, it's impossible to turn away and leave Meg alone, even when the circumstances of her life are particularly difficult to hear. S A Carmody has a skilful knack of including police procedure and criminal justice details alongside a wholly engaging story of a young girl caught in a broken system. The juxtaposition between the grim crimes committed, and the chaotic family Christmas in which she finds herself, was stark and yet at times, warmly funny. I was rooting for Meg all along, and never once felt I could stop reading until I'd reached the end of her story. One very late night later, and i'm still thinking about the characters. I know Meg, and the people that love her, are going to be very hard to shake off.