“Safe and Sound” by Philippa East
I enjoyed Philippa East’s first novel, but I didn’t love it. But with Safe and Sound she’s taken what she had and built on it, hitting all the points that make it incredibly readable and almost impossible to put down.
Sarah Jones, by all accounts, is young, pretty, charismatic and full of life—a good tenant.
But after three months go by without Sarah paying her rent, property manager Jenn enters the small London apartment to find a radio is playing, a small dining table set for three, and a decomposing body curled up on the sofa…
How is it possible that almost a year went by before someone found Sarah? Who has been paying her rent? Who was she expecting for dinner the night she died? Jenn is determined to uncover the mystery but has demons of her own to contend with…
Full disclosure, I know Philippa East and count them as a friend.
Okay, the blurb for this book is a little misleading. A young woman who dies in her flat but goes unnoticed for almost a year is the inciting incident, but not the protagonist. Instead, we follow Jenn, the woman who discovers her body and becomes obsessed with discovering the truth.
When I read East's debut novel, Little White Lies, I thought it was a great story, except it simply didn't grab me. While the characters and story were compelling and the writing great, there wasn't enough disruption to get me invested with the story.
But with Safe and Sound, I have none of those issues. The entire story is driven by the disruption the discovery of Sarah's body creates in Jenn's life. But what's great is that while Jenn's motives throughout are about discovering what happened to Sarah, it's clear from the start that her issues are internal. The mystery of what happened may be the straw that broke the camel's back, but from the beginning, we can tell that Jenn's issues go back much further. There is something else there, something from her own past and life, that's triggered her obsession.
And East handles this perfectly. Her experience as a Clinical Psychologist shines through here, as the portrayal of Jenn's anxiety and mental health issues are spot on. It's almost exhausting at times, living in Jenn's mind. Anyone who has suffered anxiety or depression will recognise the way the character thinks and the way she avoids ways to process her problems or obsessive over details that will never solve anything.
If I do have a complaint, it's that the story can be a little full-on. This was something I noticed in her last book as well. The action starts and keeps going at the same pace. This may be a little nit-picky as complaints go - I'd rather a book never slow down rather than never get going - but it would have been nice to have a few lulls to give me time to breathe.
Safe and Sound is compelling to the point of exhaustion at times, but you never want to put it down. East leads us along by creating a wonderfully realistic character in Jenn. Yes, we want to know what happened to Sarah, but we end up even more interested in learning Jenn's history, what happened to her son that has made her so paranoid, and whether she will be able to break out of her spirally anxiety.
