The Safekeep

Surprising, chilling, and electric. The Safekeep is a simply fantastic work of literature.

Alice Winn, bestselling author of IN MEMORIAM

The Safekeep is thrilling: a riveting historical reconciliation and an impossible yet inevitable love story. Superbly wrought—serious, elegant, sexy, devastating.

Julia May Jonas, author of VLADIMIR

The Safekeep is a dream of a novel — mesmerizing and shockingly good — it lulls you with the lyrical beauty of its words and then slams you awake with its raw passion and rage. Part silent scream, part breathless love story

Miranda Cowley Heller, bestselling author of THE PAPER PALACE

This is a stealthy, simmering novel about complicity and the lies we live by

Clare Pollard

Haunting and exquisitely poignant

Claire Fuller

An astonishingly skillful debut, The Safekeep manages the rare trick of being both gripping and intimate. A twisting, elegant, intriguing story about the secrets we hide in our homes and hearts - and how it only takes one person to unlock the past.

Joanna Quinn, bestselling author of THE WHALEBONE THEATRE

A beautiful book. Incredibly well-observed, surprising, and deeply textured.

Emma Healey, author of ELIZABETH IS MISSING

The Safekeep is a beautiful book, highly charged, tense, shocking and heartbreaking in equal measure.…One of those rare books that feels as if it’s been there all along, waiting to be given a voice. And what a voice this is.

Rachel Joyce

Moving, unnerving and deeply sexy

Tracy Chevalier, author of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

A strange, dream-like and troubling book, as haunting as the history it examines. Yael Van der Wouden is an extraordinarily powerful writer: it's hard to believe this can be her first book.

Cressida Connolly, author of BAD RELATIONS and AFTER THE PARTY

I loved this engrossing, claustrophobic debut novel, the best I've read so far this year. You'll be hearing a lot more about this.

Tom Rowley

A beautifully realized book, nearly perfect, as van der Wouden quietly explores the intricate nuances of resentment-hued sibling dynamics, the discovery of desire (and the simultaneous discovery of self), queer relationships at a time when they went unspoken, and the legacy of war and what it might mean to have been complicit in its horrors…. A brilliant debut, as multifaceted as a gem.

Starred Review, Kirkus

[A] mesmerizing debut....A novel of redemption as much as revenge, The Safekeep has the pacing and twists of a thriller

Bookpage

Tantalizing... fans of Patricia Highsmith and Ottesa Moshfegh's Eileen will find much to admire here.

Vulture

Ms. Van Der Wouden knows how to wring real emotion from her readers, and The Safekeep is the uncommon book that one experiences in an almost physical way

Wall Street Journal

The story is resolved in such a bold and tender way that it becomes not merely clever, but indelible

New York Times

An impressive debut; I already look forward to Van der Wouden’s next

Guardian

Van der Wouden has created a classic plot and executes it perfectly

Daily Mail

This thrilling debut novel weaves together an intense lesbian love affair with the hidden legacy of the Second World War… a razor-sharp, perfectly plotted debut novel… This book is worth your time and your patience. Van der Wouden has achieved something significant in The Safekeep, unearthing deeply buried pain and transforming it into a thrilling story.

Sunday Times

[A] remarkable debut novel

Observer

[a] simmering, sexy work.

Parade

This is an intimate novel, closely and brilliantly observed, with characters that while not likable are perhaps explainable...This is van der Wouten’s first novel, and it’s an accomplished debut

New York Journal of Books

Perfectly plotted and deeply surprising. A truly poignant debut novel, it will stay with you long after you turn the last page

Service95

Elevated from a beautifully written lesbian romance to a shocking unmasking of the legacy of the Holocaust, this book will move and grip you.

Times Summer Reads

Set a classic long, hot summer plot against the backdrop of 1960s Netherlands and you end up with this classy piece of storytelling

Daily Mail Holiday Reading

This spine-chilling debut has been getting a deserving amount of praise since its publication'

iNews - The 30 best books to read in summer 2024

[an] impressive début novel

New Yorker

Satisfying and shocking

FT