Downes, Anna. The Safe Place. St. Martins, 2020.
Emily Proudman wants to be an actress, but she has lost the current job she auditioned for. Not only that, but her agent isn’t renewing her contract, and she can’t pay her rent on her apartment. To add insult to injury, now she has been fired from her temporary office job at Proem Partners. Her parents won’t even help her out, and she is out of ideas, when a job just seems to fall in her lap.
Scott Denny, who is the attractive and rich CEO of Proem Partners, makes Emily an offer she can’t refuse—a job as a personal assistant/housekeeper/painter to his wife, Nina. What’s not to like about this job?! She gets a great salary, a car, and can live rent-free at a beautiful estate in France.
When Emily arrives at Querencia, she can’t believe her luck! The estate is a paradise, and she thinks this must be her dream job! However, Nina and Scott’s daughter, Aurelia, is a puzzle—she doesn’t speak and must wear clothes covering her whole body due to being allergic to sunlight. And Nina is hard to figure out, as well. She seems nice, but emotionally distant, and forbids Emily from entering the main house. They also seem cut off from the real world since they have no Internet service and only intermittent phone service.
Emily also finds it strange that Scott never visits his family. When he does finally arrive, months after she has been there, he seems to want nothing to do with Aurelia and doesn’t seem overly happy to see Nina. She feels something is going on, but she doesn’t know what to make of it.
She eventually leaves Querencia and drives into town, where she visits an Internet café and discovers that the Denny family has a huge skeleton in their closet. After learning this, she decides she wants to leave. However, the Dennys have other plans for Emily…
In this debut suspense thriller by Anna Downes, the author has done an excellent job of world-building by giving the reader lush descriptions of parts of France. The story is told in chapters by Emily and Scott, with some backstory narrated by Nina. It is during this backstory that readers learn what transpires in the Denny family’s lives before the novel actually begins.
The main characters are intricate and authentic, which makes for absorbing, obsessive read. Emily is portrayed as weak, immature, and gullible, but she actually grows during the novel into someone who can think for herself. Scott is aloof and controlling, but not near as much as Nina, who is also desperate and conniving. Aurelia has a whole set of problems of her own, which don’t seem to improve, partially because of her mother.
The Safe Place is an oppressive, obsessive Gothic-type novel and is on several “anticipated book lists”. There are plenty of twists, turns and surprises in the story to keep readers interested, although it does drag a bit in the middle. Hand this book to your readers who enjoy mysteries and thrillers. I recommend it for public libraries and give it three out of five fleur de lis.
Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this title.
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