Andrea, Lauren, and Ronnie all see themselves as good, loving moms who are trying their best, but they each arrive at the Welcome Breakfast for the Silver Swans preschool with something to hide. Andrea is running away from a past on the East Coast; Lauren is recovering from a postpartum condition her husband has warned her not to disclose; and Ronnie is hiding herself and her daughter from the one man who could appear at any moment and ruin their lives. The women already feel like impostors among the school’s community of polished parents. But then after the first day of school, they each get a note in their children’s backpacks, notes that indicate that someone knows their deepest, darkest secrets and needs them gone. Does someone not want them in the community? Or is it something more menacing—does someone know everything?
When the principal of the school is the victim of an almost-fatal attack, it quickly becomes clear that the Silver Swans community is not as flawless as the brochures and website would have you believe. The three moms must band together to uncover the school’s many secrets before the other suspicious parents and town police close in and use their outsider status to blame them...and before they lose what they have worked so hard for.
In Safe in My Arms, Shepard dispatches too many red herring characters right out of the gate that are impossible to keep track of, and the narrative never quite recovers. She relies on the exhausted, overdone, and all too familiar trope of a woman who can't rely on her memory and comes off as hysterical and unreasonable. And although this is a high-drama type mystery, the characters are exaggerated and unlikable, with the exception of Andrea (refreshing to have a trans character as one of the main characters in a novel).
Based on the Epilogue and Author's Note, the theme of the book is that it is a challenge to be a mother, to be the "best" or "perfect," but that you should accept where you are and cut yourself some slack. But it is confusing that the vehicle for these messages are characters that could not only benefit from hearing this, but are terrible role models.
Unfortunately, Shepard misses the mark with this one.
SARA SHEPARD is the author of two New York Times bestselling series, Pretty Little Liars and The Lying Game, as well as the series The Perfectionists. She is a graduate from New York University and holds an MFA from Brooklyn College.
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