Safe

April 1, 2020
Jenny Kristal was only 6 when she disappeared while walking to a friend's house. Twelve years later, a young woman claiming to be Jenny presents herself to the Long Island police, saying she'd like to go home to her parents, Jake and Laurie, and her older brother, Ben, who was 8 when Jenny went missing. While the FBI isn't quite satisfied with her story of the mysterious "Mother" and "Father" who abducted her, Jake and Laurie are beside themselves and don't hesitate to bring Jenny back into the fold. They're ecstatic that she remembers so much of her childhood with them before her abduction and are eager to get on with their lives. So is Jenny. But Ben has different plans. Jenny's disappearance took a heavy toll on him, and his welcome is not quite as warm. In fact, his attitude is downright hostile. After years of enduring one horror after another, Jenny fears that her newfound safety and security with her family may be fleeting, and a highly honed sense of self-preservation tells her that something isn't right in the Kristal house. Someone is slipping in and out of her bedroom during the night, and a cryptic phone call and ominous Facebook messages lead Jenny to believe that she may be in danger. The pseudonymous Barnett takes an all-too-common premise and winds it into a twisty and tense exploration of family secrets, survival, and the often blurred lines between fantasy and reality and predator and prey. And almost nothing is quite what it seems. Jenny is a shrewd observer of human nature and a frank and dryly humorous narrator, but is she a reliable one? Readers will likely think they know where this runaway train is headed, making the final twists that much more surprising. A creepy and darkly addictive thriller.

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April 6, 2020
Twelve years after six-year-old Jenny Kristal disappeared on her way to play with a friend in suburban Long Island, N.Y., she returns home—or does she? Whether the scrawny teen who nearly collapses near her old house is truly Jenny or an imposter propels this disturbing psychological thriller from the pseudonymous Barnett. Tearful mom Laurie welcomes the newcomer unconditionally, dad Jake seems oddly distant, and 20-year-old brother Ben is openly suspicious. And if things weren’t already sufficiently tense, an anonymous new Facebook friend warns Jenny she’s “not safe in that house.” Barnett skillfully maintains the central mystery as long as possible, intercutting the young woman’s efforts to investigate what actually happened that fateful day with flashbacks to the horrific abuse she suffered for years at the hands of the meth-dealing Midwestern couple she was forced to call Father and Mother. Up until the jolting last-minute twists that lead to a somewhat clichéd conclusion, this makes for involving if unsettling reading. Genre fans will want to see more from this talented author. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management.

Starred review from May 1, 2020
Ambivalence and shock are on offer here from Barnett, a pseudonym for a New York Times bestselling author whose previous book was turned into a major motion picture. As the book opens, teenage Jenny, missing since she failed to show up at a playdate with a neighbor when she was six, returns to her still-grieving family's home. Her parents seem ecstatic that their despair is over, but Jenny's brother isn't as pleased. In the first of several head-spinning twists, readers learn that the brother has a point: Jenny's first-person narration reveals that she's a serial long-lost-daughter impostor. The will-they-discover-the-duplicity tale is intertwined with Jobeth's (the usurper's real name) investigation of what happened to the real Jenny. (Potential readers should be aware that sexual and other violent child abuse is described.) A thought-provoking premise, excellently executed and featuring the incredibly believable voice of a cynical teenager who's seen way too much. Give this to readers who enjoy an unabashedly unreliable narrator.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)