Name: The Safe Place
Rating: 3.909090909090909 (22 reviews)
ISBN: 9781250264800

Anna Downes

Superbly tense and oozing with atmosphere, Anna Downs's debut is the perfect summer suspense, with the modern gothic feel of Ruth Ware and the morally complex family dynamics of Lisa Jewell. Welcome to paradise...will you ever be able to leave? Emily is a mess. Emily Proudman just lost her acting agent, her job, and her apartment in one miserable day. Emily is desperate. Scott Denny, a successful and charismatic CEO, has a problem that neither his business acumen nor vast wealth can fix. Until he meets Emily. Emily is perfect. Scott offers Emily a summer job as a housekeeper on his remote, beautiful French estate. Enchanted by his lovely wife Nina, and his eccentric young daughter, Aurelia, Emily falls headlong into this oasis of wine-soaked days by the pool. But soon Emily realizes that Scott and Nina are hiding dangerous secrets, and if she doesn't play along, the consequences could be deadly.

A Novel

The Safe Place

Megan Leprich

Oh my, this book…I don’t even know how to put my thoughts into words. This book was intense and twisty and such an entertaining read.

This was one of those twisty thrillers that immediately captured my attention and I couldn’t stop reading. It was also one of those thrillers that confused me to where I couldn’t even form my own theories about what was going to happen because it was so crazy and bizarre, BUT I MEAN THAT IN A GOOD WAY! I love thrillers that I can’t figure out anything that’s going on, I like to be surprised throughout the whole book without guessing the plot twists within the first 100 pages.

Major kudos to this book and its gorgeous cover. I’m very excited to read more by this author.

*Thanks to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the complimentary copy for my honest review*

Ashley

** spoiler alert **
           First I want to thank Anna Downes and Minotaur Books for an ARC version of this novel. 

I had a lot of mixed emotions about the people in this book. At first I really didn't like Emily. She seemed... lost and wondering. Aimless. And a little ungrateful towards her adoptive parents. But I was also trying to reserve judgment because we don't really get an inside look at her relationship with her family. Or even her friends. And I think this perception was intentional. Because it justifies why Emily would decide to take a blind leap at a job offer that would not only move her to another country for a period of time, but would put her in a secluded property, far away from anyone else, with a family she really didn't know. 

From somewhere in the middle of the book, though, it was a struggle for me to figure out exactly which character gave me the most weird vibes. Was it Scott? Who manipulated Emily's job situation in order to herd her into accepting the job he wanted to offer her. Was it Nina, who started a little tense, then merged into someone more pleasant, only to have strange bursts of hysteric hostility over seemingly minor things. Was it the creepy groundskeeper Yves who rarely spoke but always seemed to just be there. Or was it Aurelia? Who... honestly, for a time, I thought she might be stolen / kidnapped and was being kept quiet through medication. At other times, I thought she might just be Satan's child. 

By the end of the book? Nina is bat shit and, for a while, I really thought that Emily would keep all she learned about that family quiet. Which, okay, I could have weirdly accepted? Like as a type of unsatisfactory ending? But instead, Emily did the right thing, the only real thing, she could do. And while it was a little unsettling, it felt like it was the only way the book could end. 

Anna Downes did an amazing job of taking seemingly unstable characters and making them completely sympathetic by the end of the novel. And taking characters you just want to hug in the beginning and turning them, for lack of a better term, a bit bat shit crazy. It was sad and suspenseful and really just an overall well-rounded thriller. 

I still want to know what happened in Emily's past.

Manon van Heumen

This was amazing. I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. From the very first chapter, I was hooked, and I wanted to know what happened next. And the climax had me completely reeling! Can highly recommend this.

Merry Rudinger

Elizabeth Martone 

Steph

Stavroula Kalantzis

Superbly tense and oozing with atmosphere, Anna Downes's debut, The Safe Place, is the perfect summer suspense, with the modern gothic feel of Ruth Ware and the morally complex family dynamics of Lisa Jewell. Welcome to paradise...will you ever be able to leave? Emily is a mess. Emily Proudman just lost her acting agent, her job, and her apartment in one miserable day. Emily is desperate. Scott Denny, a successful and charismatic CEO, has a problem that neither his business acumen nor vast wealth can fix. Until he meets Emily. Emily is perfect. Scott offers Emily a summer job as a housekeeper on his remote, beautiful French estate. Enchanted by his lovely wife Nina, and his eccentric young daughter, Aurelia, Emily falls headlong into this oasis of wine-soaked days by the pool. But soon Emily realizes that Scott and Nina are hiding dangerous secrets, and if she doesn't play along, the consequences could be deadly.

The Safe Place A Novel

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