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Being With Someone Who Keeps You Safe

Book review of Safe With Me by K.L. Slater

Safety is one of the five needs on Maslow’s original hierarchy of needs, coming right after physiological needs, which include water, food, and clothes.

We all want to feel safe, and during our lives, we all seek for people who make us feel safe. It’s burned into our DNA.

When we feel safe with someone, and they take that safety away from us, it feels like the deepest betrayal.

The author, K.L. Slater

K.L. Slater — Kim — had been trying for many years to get published, but got nowhere with her writing. Then, when she was 40, she went back to university and gained a first-class honours degree in English & Creative Writing and a master's degree in Creative Writing.

She held a day time job during those five years of study, and the courses increased her confidence and belief in her writing, and allowed her to try different writing.

The first books of K.L. Slater’s which became published were Young Adult fiction for the Macmillan Children’s Books, which she wrote under the name Kim Slater. Her Young Adult debut, SMART, won an award, and actually started as a short story for her MA in Creative Writing in 2012.

Another story which started life during her studies — this time as the dissertation on her English & Creative Writing degree in 2010 — was Safe with Me, her first adult psychological thriller.

The creepy voice of Anna came to me strong and insistent… she wanted to be written, she wouldn’t go away. I’m so glad I listened! ~ K.L. Slater

Kim L. Slater is a full-time writer and lives with her husband in a small Nottinghamshire village.

Other books by K.L. Slater are: Blink (2017), Liar (2017), The Mistake (2017), The Visitor (2018), The Secret (2018), Closer (2018), Finding Grace (2019), The Silent Ones (2019), Single (2019), The Apartment (2020), Little Whispers (2020), The Girl She Wanted (2020), The Marriage (2021), The Evidence (2021), The Widow (2021), Missing (2022).

Crazy people in a disturbing plot

The main character in the book is Anna, a woman who lives a solitary existence and finds comfort in order and routine. She keeps people at a distance because of the hurt and damage they have caused in her life. The only person she considers a friend is the old lady next door, who has been a fixed factor in Anna’s life for many years, as Anna still lives in her parental home.

On an ordinary day, Anna witnesses a road accident, where a car hits a man on a bike. She recognizes the driver of the car as Carla, a woman who has ruined her life all those years ago. Liam is the man injured in the accident, and when Anna consoles him right after the accident, he asks her to help her.

To take revenge on Carla, Anna needs to get to know Liam, so she could follow the police investigation and keep tabs on Carla.

Anna forces her way into Liam’s life, despite protests from his grandmother, with whom he lives. Her obsession with Carla causes Anna’s life to unravel. She has difficulty executing her job — delivering mail — and controlling her OCD.

As this story unfolds, so does the story of Anna’s youth, and what has happened to her mother and brother thirteen years earlier — something Anna has always kept to herself.

We learn Anna is not the only one keeping secrets. So do Liam and his grandmother Ivy.

There comes a stage in the book where the reader wonders if there’s a sane person in the book!

My thoughts about the book

That comment, about wondering if there’s a sane person in the book, is something I wondered about. Of course there are, but with the story lines running together — that of Anna, of Carla, of the lady next door, and Liam’s — it felt like every character in the book had a twisted mind.

And I loved it.

Every action Anna took, even when wrong, seemed like a logical one, especially learning more about her back story. I went from feeling sympathy to wanting to see her admitted, back to feeling sorry for her.

I also went from negative feelings for Carla to positive ones, and the other way around with Liam.

If you like dark psychological dramas, you will enjoy this one.

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