This book was super creepy, but in a sunshine and roses kind of way.

I enjoyed it as it portrayed a happy family with great wealth but underneath was an undercurrent of darkness.

I enjoyed this read and don't want to give anything away but you should definitely give it a go!

The premise looked very promising, and it almost accomplish my expectations, since a negative aspect is that the thrill of the real plot takes a long time to present itself. However, if you have free time and want to read something relatively light with suspense overtones and some well-constructed scenes, this book is for you.

Overall an enjoyable read! Good character development. And twists.
Emily learns real good yuck that if “if it looks to good to be true,” it comes with a lot of baggage!
Looking forward to this authors next book.

Emily's life is, and probably has always been, a mess. So when Scott, a handsome and successful businessman, wants to hand her a job at his secluded house in France, she has no reason not to accept. But are things really as clear cut as they seem?

I liked parts of this book and I didn't like parts of this book, and I can't seem to put my finger on why. There are totally engrossing chapters, and totally fluffy, not so engrossing chapters, but I really like the writing and (most of) the details! However, this one definitely left me with a lot of unanswered questions in the end.

Thank you to NetGalley, Anna Downes and Minotaur Books!

I was totally surprised going into this one, the cover definitely does not match the book, but that's not a bad thing. Poor Emily just wants to work and get a job as an actress but life sure isn't going her way. Until she lands her dream job, which ends up being a nightmare! There were a few twists and turns and I Didn't see coming! Thank you Minotaur books for the book to read and review.

The Safe Place is a well written debut novel. I was captivated by Emily's story. Her character evolved as her confidence grew. This novel is filled with twists and turns. I would classify this a domestic suspense more than a thriller . It is a quick read and I look forward to more books from this author.

This is a #creeptastic and fun thriller. This unputdownable page-turner will you guessing the whole way through! A mix of romantic escapism and quite a menacing premise. A gem that I wasn't expecting! I am looking forward to more from Anna Downes. 5 stars. Thank you to the publisher for my Netgalley copy. All thoughts are my own.

Wow! I loved this book! What Emily was being offered sounded too good to be true and it definitely was. What looked like heaven turned into a living nightmare! Full of twists and turns and things I didn't see coming. Hooked from the get go and would recommend this read to anyone. 10/10!

If I could use only one word to describe this book it would be sinister. Everything looks nice on the outside but there are so many moments sprinkled throughout the story that leave you with a hair raising feeling of unease. Downes uses such vivid imagery that this book really came to life in my mind. Which was unsettling when it came to the insidious moments. I did figure out the twist before it happened but as usual, it didn’t hamper my enjoyability of the story at all. I found this book, particularly the beginning, to be an exploration on manipulation and it was intriguing seeing it all unfold. This book is also told through flashbacks of our main characters and they were a great addition because they added a lot of depth, understanding and suspense to the book. The ending was fabulously done and I really appreciate the way Downes wrapped it all up.

I don't want you to think this is as bad of a review as it might seem. This isn't a bad book, it's just... not quite ready, I don't think. It doesn't really feel like a fault of the author as much as it just needing an editor who tells the author to push things more, to take a narrative risk. As it is, it almost felt like the events I was reading were happening behind a pane of glass, instead of me being immersed. It was slow to get into and there was no immediacy. With experience, I think this story could have been done better.

Emily is not very likeable, for a protagonist, which isn't necessarily a problem, but there were points when I knew I was supposed to be rooting for her and I just wasn't. She's partially manipulated into desperation, but also mostly gets into this situation herself by being bad at her job and her desired job, and having a weird attitude problem with the town she grew up in and her parents. Again, could be interesting to explore, but instead just made me not a fan of Emily and not used enough in any other way. Scott is introduced as neurotic and weird, not the charismatic and capable billionaire CEO one would expect, another interesting idea, but we aren't given a "before" Scott to compare to, really, nor do we get to see him good at his job. His manipulations are done by money, not by any savvy. [Any possible attraction between him and Emily was told and not shown, I could see him craving the shades of the Nina he fell in love with, and by the end he realizes he wanted to be caught etc, so the addition of him maybe being in love with her just didn't feel right or good for the story. Now, if the end of the story was Emily being more enmeshed in the family in a cult-like way, that could work. There was a point where I thought they were going to have a threesome, and that would have been an interesting way to go, for Emily to decide her loyalty was with the Dennys and for her to say she knows and will keep their secret. She had some sort of attraction/obsession for both Scott and Nina, and to be wanted and desired and needed without the responsibility of being a primary partner for either of them would actually be in keeping with her character. (hide spoiler)]

A lot of my problems may have been because there's a lot of book before anything too interesting happens, and I say this as someone who loves those books where people not used to money arrive in luxury and describe all the nice things. I didn't know what kind of book it was so I didn't really know what aspects of suspension of disbelief to use. For most of the book I was expecting (view spoiler) so what happened was almost a disappointment. There are automatic lights and cameras everywhere and very early on Nina tells Scott she thinks she is being watched, yet there was no sense of menace or tension there. Really, the addition of any sense of menace would have improved the book considerably. There's no mystery or danger in the woods until [ the lost hikers show up (hide spoiler)] and nothing is really done with it.

[ Scott's saintliness wore on me a bit and felt like a bit of a cop out. He had nothing to do with it and his crime is that he loves his wife too much and didn't do anything about it afterward! He feels so bad about it, look at all this money he donated! He visits his mom with dementia! What could have been a twist, because we all suspect bad things of the handsome billionaire really felt like he was defanged and boring instead. Not until the end where he had some bewildered feelings of power, was there any pay off.

The amount of time between Emily really suspecting something is up for the first time and her realizing exactly what happened is like, a page. There's no mystery there. Wouldn't it have been more effective for her to find an obituary for Aurelia first? Or some hospital record and then evidence of a large donation afterward? and then she remembers the "storm girl"? That sequence should have been retooled in some way to have the mystery ratchet up. (hide spoiler)]

So please don't feel like this is a scathing review just because it is detailed. No, I didn't like the book, but more in the way that authors often write their first novel and just put it in a box somewhere and end up selling their second. I would absolutely read this author again, but I'd love to see them push every aspect of tension, menace, uncertainty, Emily being gaslit and confused, etc. I want to feel engulfed in the story and not far removed as I did here.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 The Safe Place - Anna Downes

Thank you @minotaurbooks & @netgalley for the gifted ecopy in exchange of an honest review!

Aspiring actress, Emily Proudman is not sure how she is going to be able to make ends meet when she is let go from her desk job and dropped by her agent all in the same week. When her previous employer, the wealthy and charming Scott Denny offers her the opportunity to be an au pair/housekeeper at his estate on the coast of France with his wife and daughter, promising her own vehicle, guest house, and spending card, the offer is too good to pass up! Charmed by the picturesque atmosphere and acceptance she feels within their family, Emily is smitten and feels as though she’s won the job lottery. But as weeks go by, Emily begins to wonder if her dream job and new “family” might just be too good to be true...


Okay generally speaking, 2020 may be an absolute dumpster fire, but it is a fantastic year for EXCELLENT thrillers! I absolutely fell in love with the setting of this book! Although I wouldn’t say the twist was shocking or extremely unpredictable, I was still engaged and committed throughout the entire story.


The Safe Place is another absolute must read summer thriller! Anna Downes may be a debut author, but she writes like a seasoned professional and has absolutely blown me away! Fans of Lisa Jewell, Shari Lapena & Ruth Ware will adore Downes! I can’t wait to see what she writes next!

I wanted to love this so bad, but it just never grabbed my interest or hooked me. It felt so slowly paced and nothing happened at all until the bitter end.

Great book! I loved this! It definitely kept my attention and I couldn't stop reading it. I had no clue what the big reveal would be!

Emily Proudman, a young woman living in London, finds that her acting career isn't taking off and her temping job isn't either. After being given an eviction notice on her flat Emily then gets fired from her job as a receptionist for a large company run by Scott Denny. Scott is use to getting what he wants and decided that Emily would be the perfect person to work at his French property. He offers Emily a job as a housekeeper and nanny to keep his wife Nina, and young daughter Aurelia, company. Emily thinks the job opportunity sounds perfect but not all is as it seems. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC.

A Good thriller that definitely had my attention throughout, I enjoyed the writing, it was engaging and flowing. Didn't cling onto tedious details so I was never bored.
However, this book was just missing its Wow factor for me, the main character Emily wasn't developed strongly enough in my opinion, I felt she didn't bring a lot to the table and therefor left a slight disinterest of her. I say slight though as there was a bit more going on in the story to keep my interest levels awake.
I did enjoy the plot but again, it could have been developed more too to be totally honest.
Still,like I say this wasn't a boring read and would rate it a GOOD thriller just without all the twisty turny aspects I'm probably used to.
Will definitely look out for more by this author in the future 😁
Thank you to #netgalley for this one in exchange for my honest opinion.
THE SAFE PLACE is out NOW! by #affirmpress

Solid 3.5 book. Interesting mystery, but it had a slightly predictable ending (maybe that’s to blame on reading too many mysteries/thrillers lately). I enjoyed the writing style and would read another Anna Downes book.

A solid three-star book for me, I enjoyed the story and it was certainly creepy and thrilling in parts but there were definitely areas that could have been stronger. The main issue I had was with the main character Emily - an unlikeable flaky person who is neither smart nor particularly nice. She has no friends and a fractured relationship with her adopted parents. This latter situation evokes no sympathy as it is clearly Emily who is mostly to blame, something she does come to understand eventually.
As we are whisked away to a beautiful luxury estate in France, it is not only the main character who can’t believe her luck. Scott, her sexy and rich boss, plucks her from obscurity on the vaguest of gut feelings she’d be “good” for a role he has chosen her for. Scott is clearly supposed to be up to something suspicious, but we the reader really can’t dislike the poor man, who is under a lot of stress to the point that he viciously self-harms. His wife Nina is a beautiful, weird enigma, and I confess she gave me the willies from the start.
I must admit that I did not predict the twist, thinking instead that we were uncovering a case of what is now a well-worn plot device; Munchausen-by-proxy. Emily herself eventually wonders if this latter horror is the case but it takes a long time for the story to build even to the point where she begins to feel something is wrong. I would have liked the tension and sense of wrongness to be escalated earlier, though there are small clues early on. Once Emily does figure out what’s happening at the estate and the secret that revolves around Scott, Nina and their child Aurelia- albeit accidentally - her actions make little sense and I must confess I was almost yelling at the page at some points. I heartily disliked the ending, the whole terrible crime being exposed off the page which felt like a betrayal when the reader has been rooting for justice for the whole third act. The implied release of one particular character from accountability is an additional let-down for the reader. Lastly, I had issues with the title, which did not seem to be mentioned in the book (that I can recall) nor suit the story, so didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

I didn't know in which direction the plot of this debut novel was heading, as it started off to all intents and purposes, with romantic vibes. .Then it changed direction and started to become more interesting. A very descriptive, sometimes overly so book, full of colourful characters and a pervading sense of menace, makes this a worthwhile reading experience. Many thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for this ARC.

Over the last few months, I've started reading more psychological thrillers than I have in the past. Unfortunately, however, my foray into the thriller genre has been met with only very limited success: with only two exceptions, all of the thrillers I've read have been three-star reads or lower. I don't know why I was cursed to read only mediocre thrillers--maybe I was just reading the wrong thrillers, or maybe I was just unduly harsh on books in the genre--but whatever it was, I'm happy to report that The Safe Place has, at least temporarily, brought me out of my thriller slump, so you can say that I am beyond thrilled (ha ha).

I was sucked into the story from the get-go and didn't come up for air until I finished the story a couple hours later. I liked that there were some things that I didn't see coming (predictability is a recurring issue for me), but at certain points the characters still pissed me off by doing nonsensical things that made me scratch my head and think, "wtf," (another recurring issue).

Although it's not a five-star thriller in my book, it deserves each of the four stars I did give it. I can only hope that whatever thriller I decide to read next is on par with this one. The Safe Place is a tough act to follow.

Thank you NetGalley and Affirm Press for the eARC of The Safe Place, by Anna Downes in exchange for my honest review.

Imagine if you're whole life was falling apart and suddenly you got THE live-in job opportunity to a wealthy family that was so perfect it was just too good to be true?

That's exactly what happened to Emily. An aspiring actress who just lost her job as a receptionist, got dropped by her agent and was notified by her landlord that, after all the delays on paying the rent, she's going to be evicted. That's when the CEO of her former company, Scott, knight in shining armour, arrives to offer her the job of a lifetime.

A live-in job as a personal assistant/housekeeper in his family's estate at the coast of France. He needed her because the couple's daughter, Aurelia, had a lot of health issues and Nina (the mom) couldn't look after her and take care of the estate all by herself. A summer getaway from her crazy life in London without having to worry about money for the first time since graduating seemed like everything Emily could ever want and more, plus the old-now-new-boss wasn't too bad to look at, so into a private jet she went. But the picture-perfect family wasn't perhaps that perfect after all.

As soon as I started reading this book I was pulled right in. This is the perfect mystery to read by the pool or the ocean. We get both Scott and Emily's perspectives in this, which I LOVED, as well as some of Nina's perspectives from the past. This made the story much more interesting and thrilling and made me even more curious to piece everything together. I was hooked to this book from the start and my heart was pounding at the end.

Although I did manage to guess the big twist (not to its fullest extent) this did not diminish my enjoyment of the book in the slightest and I still had no idea how this was going to end. I adored Anna Downes writing and, seen as this is her debut, I can only imagine what's she's gonna come up with next. Will definitely keep my eyes peeled to whatever that is because her writing is flawless.

Overall this book is incredibly gripping, the characters are really realistic and the mystery is very well developed. I did wish we got a bit more on Emily's background but I loved the open note it left at the ending, like we didn't need to know every single thing. I love when authors do that well.

I gave this book 3.5/5 ⭐️. Very immersive and engrossing read, I highly recommend it to anyone who likes mysteries with a bit more of a psychological focus. Loved it and cannot wait to read more of Anna Downes' books.