Admittedly, I am extremely late to the game when it comes to Yael van der Wouden’s 2024 debut novel The Safekeep (Simon & Schuster); however, I now regret not picking this one up sooner. The Safekeep has the lasting impact of an instant classic alongside the gripping and propulsive plot of any good story.
Set in 1961 in the rural Dutch province of Overijssel, residents have once again become used to the quiet. The bomb craters of World War II have been filled, the buildings rebuilt and repaired, and the war appears to be in the past. Since her mother’s death, Isabel has lived alone in her family’s country home. Life for Isabel is ruled by routine and discipline, and she takes comfort in its daily steadiness. But Isabel’s routine is upended when her brother, Louis, brings his disruptive new girlfriend Eva to Isabel’s doorstep, asking that she stay for the summer.
Eva at first appears to be Isabel’s total opposite: she sleeps late, takes up space where Isabel thinks she shouldn’t, and is overloud and nosy. When things start to disappear around the house, Isabel’s suspicions center obsessively on Eva. But as the summer grows hotter, Isabel struggles to find the line between suspicious scrutiny and infatuation, and her relationship with Eva leads to a revelation that shakes the foundation of Isabel’s life and nothing is what it seems.
From the very first page, I fell in love with this book. The images and the writing are what fling this story forward in ways that make it difficult to put down. There are mysterious and almost Gothic elements to this story that reminded me of novels like Rebecca, with hauntings, family secrets, and a house at the center of everything. Of course, this novel has many of its own unique twists and poignant questions at the heart of its plot.
If you liked The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, this novel will give you similar feelings with its high stakes, fraught tension, and overwhelming intensity. Despite being relatively short, van der Wouden creates an immersive setting and characters who compel and confound in equal measure. Isabel’s mind is difficult to live in at times, and yet the reader also comes to understand her need to isolate as a means of self-protection. The Safekeep shows the lasting legacy of war, trauma, and anguish on micro and macro levels through glimmers of one family’s complicated legacy. Ultimately, however, it is a hopeful novel, and one that champions characters’ persistence and resilience even when they are tempted to stay silent.
I highly recommend The Safekeep for lovers of historical fiction, literary fiction, and mysteries.
Please add The Safekeep to your TBR on Goodreads and see Yael van der Wouden’s website.
Content Warnings: violence, war, death.
Rachel M. Friars, PhD is the author of Neo-Victorian Lesbians on Screen (Anthem 2025) and several articles on lesbian historical fiction. Her current research centers on neo-Victorianism and lesbian literature and history. Her work has been published with journals such as Studies in the Novel, The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies, Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, and The Palgrave Handbook of neo-Victorianism.
You can find Rachel on X @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.
