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

I actually found this the perfect thriller palate cleanser after a particularly heavy previous read. Not fast paced but not boring. A pool side thriller and a solid one.

Rebecca McCombe

I actually found this the perfect thriller palate cleanser after a particularly heavy previous read. Not fast paced but not boring. A pool side thriller and a solid one.



Kristen Claiborn

I LOVE finding new authors, especially when it comes in a surprise book mail. This story had a slow start but the slow didn't last long. It sucked me in and wouldn't let me go until I finished. I did find it to be unnecessarily wordy and it rambled aimlessly at times, but it was otherwise a good read.

amazing!! felt like i was watching a movie the whole time!

fab.io 

Lauren Attaway

I think all of my reviews are particularly reflective of this year. I've not had as easy a time of reading, and the books/genres I would normally turn to during this bizarre summer have been hit and miss. 
That being said, I really enjoyed the demented big staycation energy behind The Safe Place. Struggling actress/person Emily Proudman is going through it. She is fired from her job and dumped by her agent. When her former boss Scott offers her the chance to move to remote France and help his wife Nina take care of their home and troubled child Aurelia, she runs off without any real thought. This being the kind of book I love, things are not what they seem and she may or may not be in danger. 

This book was bonkers. I kept trying to guess the ending, solve what was happening. Even when I was right, I was wrong. What I enjoyed most about these characters was that they mostly felt like real people. Everyone was a little annoying and a lot selfish. I also appreciated a trip to a nightmare house in France when I'm stuck in NYC for the foreseeable future. The Safe Place was a thriller and a vacation and a modern gothic all rolled into one. A great debut and I hope to read the author's next book-hopefully far from home-next summer. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

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*

Jacklyn O’Brien 

An intense, entertaining book that thriller enthusiasts will like.

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

Alexandra Coleman

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

Reviews