Review: The Safe Place by Anna Downes

This is an intriguing debut thriller. I would like to thank Minotaur Books for the advance reading copy, it was a fun vacation read!

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links, see disclosures for more detail.

About the Book:

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.

My Thoughts:

I gave this book 3.5 stars

I liked this book, but it just didn’t seem to go quite far enough to be the creepy thriller it wanted to be.

I think the main problem with that is that Emily is not a likable character. I mean AT. ALL. She is way too old to be as irresponsible and whiny about her life as she is. She blames everything on a past that honestly didn’t seem all that bad. Her circumstances were due to bad choices on her part, not because of any disadvantages she might have had.

I overall really liked the mystery portions of this book and as more background was revealed I liked it more and more. I know Emily had to be the way she was to make it work out that she was willing to chuck everything and move to the middle of nowhere, but I honestly wanted to smack her and tell her to grow up.

The ending was great, I loved how everything came together and it was quite satisfying. For a debut novel, this one was decent and I will definitely check out further books by this author in the future.