May 2021 Group Read - Safe and Sound by Philippa East

[Bill]

I’m half finished and finding Jenn very likeable but perhaps an unreliable narrator with some mental issues. We also have a backstory about two little girls named Prin and Jane and wonder how the fit with the main plot.

[Beth]

Interesting, Bill, because I find her quite an unlikeable wimp who hasn’t cut the umbilical cord with Charlie and lies on the job.

The style of writing reminds me of the novel we read by Nikki French; mostly narration of what she is thinking.

Am not enjoying this one I hope it gets better in the last 3/4 of the book

[Bill]

Finished and fear this is another of those books one likes till one doesn’t. Not sure whether I was wrong to nominate Safe and Sound; a crime is involved in the plot as well as a mystery, but the stories never really coincide.

I read this book under false pretenses, believing it to be a work of crime fiction. After being disappointed, I went back over its listing on Amazon.com and found it advertised as a 'mystery' and a 'psychological thriller' as well a featuring a dead body, it does not actually claim to be a 'murder mystery'. There is a murder in the backstory, but it in no way figures in the plot of this book. I would classify it as a 'Bell Jar' - a story about a main character, the narrator, enduring psychological trauma. Jenn is a thirty-one year-old single mum (though she seems to evince the maturity of a teenager) obsessivly concerned with the welfare of her nine-year-old son Charlie. She is also a housing manager of some blocks of flats in south London, where one of tenants is discovered to have died unreported ten months ago. Jenn sets about finding out what happened to Sarah, whilst increasingly becoming more and more mentally disturbed herself. Frankly, I would have found the story contrived and unconvincing simply as a story about mental breakdown, but under the mistaken belief that it was a murder mystery, I felt that readers were cheated.

[Pat]

I didn't feel cheated by Safe and Sound, by Philippa East. I've read several psychological mysteries and with my interest in how the human mind works, I found this one compelling in story questions and plot. I'm giving it a score of 4.