To Keep You Safe by Kate Bradley

          2.5 Stars

The biggest issue I had with this novel was that absolutely everything is flagged up in the early chapters; you can feel the "twist" coming from the first couple of pages.  Almost as soon as Jenni Wales is introduced on the page you know there is something not entirely trustworthy about her narration, that there is a skewed perspective at play.  This colours the entire novel for me as you are just waiting for it to come and as events unfolded I became less and less interested in what that was going to be.

Neither of our main two characters - Jenni and Destiny - are particularly empathetic.  Instead they are a collection of cliches that vaguely represent a person in a non-realistic way.  Jenni is a product of her PTSD and never really steps outside of that.  Destiny is a child in care who fulfils every stereotype of "good girl gone bad".  It just feels somehow lazy on the characterisation as, at most, each character has two dimensions and never steps outside of their neat little box.

There is quite a lot of violence in the book and the author goes to great pains to describe punches landing and flesh splitting.  At the risk of sounding peculiar these are some of the highlights of the book, in that they highlight how bland much of the rest of the tale is.  Not helped by threads being left dangling throughout and some whopping great plot holes, particularly surrounding George.

Then we get to the denouement and it is at odds with the rest of the book.  It becomes all saccharin and I suppose it is meant to be seen as redemptive but I found it pretty cloying and it made me want to throw the thing against the wall.  I get what the author is trying to say about how events outside of our control shape us but it felt heavy handed and almost written by committee sat with a list of points they wanted to make instead of just telling a story.