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.