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The Safe Place: A Novel Kindle Edition
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.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMinotaur Books
- Publication dateJuly 14, 2020
- File size6455 KB
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A July 2020 Indie Next Pick!
A PopSugar "Best New Book of July 2020"
One of Travel + Leisure's "20 Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2020"
One of Ms. Career Girls's "Summer Releases for Your TBR List"
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A She Reads "Summer's Hottest Thrillers"
A South Florida Sun-Sentinel "Best of the Year" Pick
“[Downes is] skilled at ratcheting up the tension and conveying Emily’s sense of thrumming unease . . . an unusual and thrilling narrative.”―The New York Times
“Downes keeps the sense of foreboding building . . . Emily is a compelling character who arrives in France scatterbrained and immature but find the inner strength to save herself.”―The Washington Post
“Downes imbues The Safe Place with a strong sense of the gothic, keeping the suspense high and the tension in the Querencia household palpable. Surrounded by decay, Emily proves her mettle as her maturation and emotional growth enhance the solid plot with its myriad surprises and twists. The Safe Place delivers a deliciously creepy debut.”―South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Secrets are laid bare, and the novel moves toward a conclusion that melds sorrow with satisfaction, ruin with redemption. She does so with evocative and insightful prose, striking characters and a plot that’s astute, addictive and alarming. Downes, who draws on her past for elements of The Safe Place, shows great promise and creates equally great expectations.”―The Free Lance-Star
“The perfect summer mystery read.”―PopSugar
“I absolutely devoured The Safe Place, and lived and breathed every second. The images Anna Downes creates are so vivid and real that I was transported between Soho and France in the flick of an eye. I had no idea where it was going; I just knew I had to hold onto Emily’s coattails and go along for the ride. This one is going to fly! If you love a suspense thriller with a punch, I’d highly recommend The Safe Place.”―Sandie Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Woman
“[A] mix of romantic escapism and gothic menace. Ruth Ware fans may want to check this one out.”―Publishers Weekly
“Downes' debut novel is a slow burn of a story with Emily picking up on snippets of conversations as a breadcrumb trail leads her to an astounding conclusion. A great read for those looking for a side of mystery with their women's fiction.”―Booklist
“A riveting review.”―SheKnows "Best Summer Books of 2020"
“The Safe Place is such a rare thing―a claustrophobic, addictive thriller that lets you actually feel for all of the characters involved. Anna Downes has such skill in combining the heart-in-mouth feeling that everything is building to a disaster with genuine emotion. I was right behind her as she chose this big change in her life, and in a strange way, right behind Scott and Nina, too, whose stories were heartbreaking.”―Gytha Lodge, bestselling author of She Lies in Wait
“The Safe Place is a brilliantly atmospheric novel that keeps you equally gripped and unsettled from page one. Starkly original and with an alarmingly plausible premise, this is destined to be a bestseller.”―J.P. Pomare, bestselling author of Call Me Evie
"The Safe Place is compellingly disturbing. Anna Downes is a powerful story writer who will lull you into a false sense of security―and then pounce. An author to be watched."―Jane Corry, bestselling author of My Husband’s Wife and I Made a Mistake
“The Safe Place is a dark and wonderful debut that lulls you in with beautiful prose and complex, believable characters, then beats you over the head with a killer plot and a thrilling climax. It’s the kind of book you race through as quickly as you can so you can start it again. Everyone will be talking about this book!”―Christian White, internationally bestselling author of The Nowhere Child and The Wife and the Widow
“The tension ratchets up and up in this beautifully paced thriller―an outstanding debut, populated by complex and sympathetic characters. You’ll be thinking about them long after you’ve finished reading. Destined to be a book club favorite.”―Chris Hammer, international bestselling author of Scrublands
“I loved The Safe Place . . . it was tense and atmospheric with the seemingly idyllic yet eerie setting. A truly gripping read.”―Karen Hamilton, author of The Perfect Girlfriend
“I could just close my eyes and float away reading this book. I tore through this one and was as blindsided as Emily was when the truth came out. Downes did a fabulous job of sucking me right into this perfect little world and left me wanting more. This was my first book by this author and I’ll absolutely be back for more!”―We Are Bookish
“Gripping, satisfying and also promising first suspense novel. Psychological suspense, really, but in a setting where we expect a “gothic romance”―isolated house, mysterious owner, troubled child needing care. . . . But a larger cast than that, and characters that, even though we are in close point of view with each in turn, continue to surprise us.”―Shawangunk Journal
“It all adds up to an intriguing and addictive read. A real page turner; I couldn't put the book down once the secrets began to be unveiled.”―The AU Review.com
"Anna Downes’ debut places her firmly as a new player on the psychological thriller playing field! I can’t wait to see what she does next. With her strength for characters, structure, and pacing, I am definitely all in on it!"―Novel Lives
"All the stars! An incredible debut from a new voice in suspense fiction, this was a tension-building and atmospheric read."―The Reading Beauty
Product details
- ASIN : B0818B89T9
- Publisher : Minotaur Books (July 14, 2020)
- Publication date : July 14, 2020
- Language : English
- File size : 6455 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 358 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #311,333 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #674 in Women's Psychological Fiction
- #1,978 in Domestic Thrillers (Books)
- #3,969 in Psychological Thrillers (Kindle Store)
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The Safe Place is a thrilling, captivating tale that is paradoxically anything but safe about a family that asks a young woman named Emily to be their live-in personal assistant at their secluded, picturesque home in France. Up to that point, Emily’s life has been falling apart: she’s just lost her job, her acting agent, and she has a fraught relationship with her adopted parents. So when she happens upon this serendipitous twist of fate she falls for the illusion of beautiful deception that dazzles her upon first glance. The home and the people are charming to the point of almost seeming illuminatingly ethereal as Emily finds herself privy to this secret world that is closed off to outsiders.
Scott, her former boss, who first gave her the offer causes warmth to run lucidly through her veins as she develops a girlhood, giddy crush on him that impairs her rational judgment. As much as she tries to deny herself these feelings they reemerge with a heady brightness that blinds her. But he is a transient presence in the house, floating in and out, as he is bound to his job in London to support his family’s wealthy, material lifestyle. Nina, his wife, is a more permanent fixture in Emily’s life and a bit of a broken bird, who can be fragile to the touch and unpredictably erratic when acted upon or crossed, but also exudes an exotic, exquisite elegance. Additionally, she becomes the target of hushed, cuttingly brutal gossip at the office Emily used to work at, which draws forth questions about who she really is? Is the gossip true or baseless? The last member of their family is a mute child named Aurelia, who has a health condition where she can’t be out in the sun without breaking out in hives and has intensely explosive, unpredictable emotional outbursts and actions.
“Everyone was carrying something, she was beginning to realize. The world was a much darker and more complicated place than she’d ever thought.”
At first there’s nowhere Emily would rather be, but then strange occurrences begin to emerge and swirl like a storm surge around Emily, until she is even deeper into the eye of the storm, and put into a position of worrisome uncertainty. There are unexpected power outages that leave her locked in, strange movements in the ink of the guarded night, and secrets kept about what’s really going on, especially as Emily gets closer and closer to the truth, as where Emily goes on the property is also strictly dictated and limited by Nina.
The author builds momentum gradually in an effective slow-burn that picks up and intensifies at all the right moments with a crackling vivacity. I was intoxicatingly pulled in to this dangerous paradise that is a lot like a temporary magic that fills in the lonely gaps, but when looked at and examined under a more critical, close lens is unraveling to reveal a volatility that will cause even the sanest of people to split at the seams.
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.
My Thoughts: The story in The Safe Place unfolds slowly, almost like a lazy afternoon on a beautiful French estate. Emily is drawn to Nina and Scott, and to the life they share. But beneath the beauty, she senses something strange and secretive and mysterious about this family.
I was especially curious about Nina, whose behavior was very worrisome, and the things she hides behind cabinets and in cupboards…well, one might wonder what more she has hidden. But where is Scott in the mix? He is away most of the time, and whenever Emily wonders if she is in the wrong place, he reappears, seemingly pulling her into his web.
The slow pace felt like a drag at times, but then suddenly and unexpectedly the pace quickens and we begin to see bits and pieces of the hidden things. And they are alarming. From that point on, I was glued to the pages, wondering what would be revealed. 4.5 stars.
Top reviews from other countries
It is still definitely worth reading and I did enjoy it, but I just wish it hadn’t reminded me of something I’d already read about towards the end.