Safe, by S. K. Barnett, is a mystery regarding a little girl's kidnapping. Jenny Kristal was kidnapped twelve years ago, and she has finally returned home. And now that she's home again is she safe? Is she really even Jenny? Where has she been all this time? Jenny's answers aren't adding up, but Jenny's parents' answers don't really make any sense either. This mystery kept me guessing, and there were quite a few surprising reveals. I would definitely recommend Safe to fans of mysteries/thrillers. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

Thank you Dutton for the gifted copy.

OK, so I honestly don't know what to say about this book. I keep switching between 3 and 4 stars, because I liked the plot overall but there was a lot of things that are really disturbing. (please check for trigger warnings before you read the book if you are sensitive to some material)

Jenny goes missing on the way to her friends house when she is 6. Twelve years later, she's back. Seems like she escaped from the kidnappers. Pretty standard, cut and dry thriller right? Ummm...no. The twists come one after another. Just when I thought I knew what was going on, something else would get thrown at me and I was like WHAT?!

I almost think there were too many twists. Is that possible?

4 stars for creativity and the fact that I read this in one day, but 3 stars because of disturbing content at the end.

An un-put-downable, all-consuming psych thriller!

This felt like a really fresh thriller and I read it compulsively in about two sittings. At first, it seemed like your run-of-the-mill missing child story, but it was NOT. There were so many twists, turns, and "oh shit" moments. I highly recommend this one!!

It’s been 12 years since Jenny disappeared. Suddenly she is back. She has miraculously escaped her captors and made her way home. She faced some trauma, but her family is so glad to have their no longer so little girl back. But where was she all this time? Who took her? How did she escape?

This book hooked me from page 1. I could not put it down. I read it in one day and that is rare during these coronavirus times when I’m having trouble concentrating. It reminded me of another book I read last year but I can’t for the life of me remember the title! Either way, this one had me on edge trying to figure out what the secrets here were. This book was fast paced, mysterious, and thrilling! I don’t want to go too far with this review because I think this one is truly best to go into blind. I highly recommend grabbing a copy of this one when it comes out on June 9th!

As another side note: I’m dying to figure out who SK Barnett is a pseudonym for. A New York Times bestselling author whose previous book was turned into a major motion picture. Any ideas?

Thank you to Dutton Books for my gifted copy of this book!

I couldn't stand the writing style of this one. It was so choppy. After starting with an eloquent newspaper article, i felt like I was dropped into an entirely different book. I called the twists before they were revealed. If this book wasn't short with relatively simple language, I might not have finished it. As it stands, I read it very quickly. And it was fine, but nothing special. It felt like it was trying to do too much but not dedicating itself to any of the things properly. And it confused me because I was seeing all of these five star reviews.

We have the convenient friend who comes out of nowhere and does all of the legwork for nothing. We have the amnesiac character (why's there always an amnesiac?). We have the totally boring parents. It just didn't grip me. We also have a lot of little flickers of trauma without enough meat to them to actually feel real; I wanted more from those more difficult scenes.

Thanks to Dutton and Edelweiss for the advanced review copy of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley, S.K. Barnett and Dutton for the free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

There have been a lot of amazing reviews for this one, but I found in the beginning I really couldn’t connect with the characters. However, I did suspect something fishy was going on and really didn’t want to stop reading. I didn’t enjoy any of the characters really, but that was because they all have done sketchy things and that made them all the more interesting. There was so many times that I was sure I knew what happened to Jenny and who did it, but you will NEVER see the ending coming! I was shocked by twisty the ending was and I enjoyed every minute of it! I would definitely recommend reading!

Out now!

*Many thanks to the publisher for providing my review copy.

This was a really thrilling story.
I was intrigued from the first page as to what was happening.

I love the idea of this girl who had been missing coming home and was hot finding out what happened to her this whole time.

At times I got a little confused with the writing style however that could be just due to how the book was formatted on my Kindle.

There were an excellent few twists I'm very happy with how this book went

When I started Safe I thought I was reading a book about Jenny who had been kidnapped at age 6 but managed to escape and find her way back to her family a dozen years later.

And the book started out like that. Then, just as I was waiting for the expected complicated personal and social dynamics to begin ( I mean how does and person and a family move forward from that sort of trauma?) there was a twist and it became a different story entirely. One with a protagonist that was really and understandably flawed and with a storyline that was totally propulsive, filled with tension, and with several more twists (all plausible - not of the totally out of left field variety) which kept me guessing until close to the end.

It should be no surprise that a book that deals with the kidnapping of a child comes with a content warning for child sex abuse. I will say I thought it was handled well. The horror was conveyed but the actual abuse was either alluded to or briefly depicted in ways that were not gratuitous.

Really glad I read this. Even if it wasn’t the story I first expected. And if anyone had any good recommendations for the story I was expecting, please pass them on.