[Review] The Safe Place - Anna Downes

Summary: 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. (Pub Date: Jul 14, 2020)

I had no idea what was going on, and I just had to keep reading.

3.5, but rounded up. Not that creative, but a very pleasing read nonetheless.

Emily's life hit rock bottom, she lost her job, all auditions she tried for so far and even her agency is letting her go. That's when her former boss Scott gets her the perfect option and getaway from her life—to be a personal assistant to his wife in a secluded house in France.

Even though it takes about a quarter of the book for us to get to the famed safe house in the title, we get a glimpse of it during the flash-forward in the prologue and all the strategy Scott goes through to make sure Emily is the perfect candidate were more than entertaining.

I think the book actually loses a bit of pacing after we meet the house and his wife in real time. There we find how the couple's daughter had health issues when a baby and now the girl still seems to suffer from after effects, so his wife is very protective of her now, with the whole "safe house" project being probably to make sure the girl would be healthy. I found the relationship between the three of them—Emily, Scott, and his wife—a little cringey too, so that could be the reason this middle part of the book felt slow; that I kept thinking, can't we just fast forward this third-person embarrassment, please?

As you can already see, the book is well structured and after this "happy" part, even Emily starts seeing things aren't right at all. As a reader, you keep trying to guess what is wrong with that deal since the first page, of course. And now I know, I can't say it was surprising at all. However, I can't say I guessed it in advance either. Still, I keep feeling naive about the answer to the mystery. It was so simple, it was disappointing, actually. Because this is a book that bets a lot on the mystery, with nothing much happening before we arrive in the last quarter, that disappointment made it lose some points with me.

I'd also like to note that the I found the ending explained well the main story, but the writer left a few unanswered questions. Especially about Emily's past as a child, which she queued too many times about along the story to then not offer a full explanation.

Aside from that, the book was pretty much okay. In fact, it was above average, and that's why, despite not feeling it a full-fledged four-star, I'm sure it deserved getting the stars rounded up. It was quick to read, it kept me interested about the ending. Even if it wasn't that good a plot twist for the conclusion, it did close what mattered of the story too. And I must add, I'm looking forward to more works by Anna Downes; this was a nice book.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.