- Title: The Safe Place
- Author: Anna Downes
- Series: no, standalone
- Publisher & Release: Minotaur Books, 7/14/20
- Length: 368 pages
- Rate & Recommend: 🌞🌞🌞🌞 probably
Thank you so much to Minotaur Books for my free ARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own!
Here is the synopsis from Amazon:
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 is a slow burning suspense novel, perfect for anyone itching to get out and visit the French countryside this summer. Emily is a trainwreck and her new job offer seems too good to be true. Her boss, Scott, clearly has some issues of his own as well. We travel with Emily to his remote French estate and meet Scott’s wife and daughter. Everything looks normal as long as Emily doesn’t look too hard. What secrets lie in the house and why is the daughter, Aurelia, also such a trainwreck? Is it really just an illness or something more sinister?
I enjoyed this one. It is told from alternating perspectives, resulting in a fairly quick read. I kept wanting to read more to get back to Nina’s chapters. The book winds its way slowly through the women’s lives on the estate, through afternoons spent poolside and Saturdays in the local market. The dark undertones are subtle and present throughout, and the end result wasn’t what I was guessing at all.
I felt like not enough truly suspenseful things happened though until the end, and a few great shock opportunities were passed by the author and never resolved at the end. I mean that odor that Emily kept smelling…
Anyway – the book never dragged nor got boring. I definitely enjoyed meeting Emily and the others, she was a good character. Naive but found her way in the end. All of the perspectives were pretty easy to read although i did favor Nina’s the most. I think lower level suspense fans who enjoy a twist of mystery will love the book!
Have you read it? Want to discuss it? Drop a comment below!
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