If you are looking to open your mind and think beyond past and present, this book provides a brilliant way to do so through the characters, storyline, and futuristic setting.

I found myself impressed with the author's ability to ideate potential trajectories of wellness, technology, and the environment and found myself re-examining my own relationship with the book's focus areas. While I don't often read dystopian novels, I am glad I made this departure and am reminded of the value of fiction, as well as this genre.

I’ve been diving headfirst into books that speculate on the near future and what it might hold for us, despite the fact that it scares the shit out of me every time. Most of these novels seem to hinge on a culty, Goop-like female “wellness” CEO capitalizing on the profit potential of the fall of society, their reign of terror masquerading in a pale pink facade. You’re Safe Here is my favorite of these novels so far, largely because it felt so plausible. Which is sufficiently terrifying. I could see so many of the aspects of this book coming to life - the tiny camera they wear on their scalp that broadcasts their entire life to the internet, the injectable medical devices that monitor their health and vitals - it doesn’t feel too far out of reach. This one is a queer and twisty speculative thriller that poses tough questions to chew on: What does privacy mean when publicity is social currency? At what point does technological advancement become a hindrance? And would you ride off with Gwyneth Paltrow into the apocalyptic sunset?

Great speculative look into how tech, wellness, and climate change could continue to shape society - with all the dystopian creepiness that you'd expect. The tech was my favorite part; the mommy issues were my least favorite.

I enjoyed the writing style and how it slowly peeled back the layers of this world & the characters, while leaving some questions unanswered. Somewhat slow but twisty pace, it took a while for the true plot to unfold. After so much build up, the ending felt too abrupt and left me wanting to know more about what happened next to the 3 main characters. But that seemed like a purposeful choice by the author.

Somehow I was invested in the story and society without really caring for any of the characters?? I usually have no problem loving morally grey characters.

This was a really unique read and one that was both engrossing and unsettling. The way tech influences our lives is something I think about a lot, and this book's approach will haunt me for a while. I have enjoyed Leslie's newsletters and blog writing for years now, and I loved being able to read her book!

You're Safe Here was a great first novel. I loved the exploration of the characters and the speculative elements were believable.

I really enjoy reading Leslie Stephen's writing. I'm a paid subscriber to her newsletter, and I had such high hopes for this book based on how much I like it. This is why it makes me so sad to not like <i>You're Safe Here</i> (so much so that I've avoided writing a review of the ARC I received months ago--sorry about that, NetGalley).

I want to start with the positive--Stephens is great at world-building. She creates a world that feels like it's just on the cusp of now. It's a nuanced world with details that make it feel real and like a warning cry for our relationship with technology. Unfortunately, everything else about the book is poorly done. The relationships between the characters are really static (the protagonist and both of her love interests barely engage); we never really get to see the main cause of the tension between them, and all of it fizzles out in the most unsatisfying way. While the book initially feels like it's going to be a sci-fi thriller, it devolves into a meandering mess of mommy issues that also never feels satisfying or logical. I think the book could have been so much better if an editor probed the author's choices more and asked about motivations since the plot points feel more like half-developed ideas that end with a whimper instead of something with more grit.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC of this book.

I was unable to get into this book. Reading it felt very tedious and despite the interesting premise, I did not feel emotionally invested in continuing.

MILD SPOILER AHEAD!

This book hooked me with the premise, but it didn't live up to my excitement. The first half is pretty slow, and the second half has a lot of twists and turns, but nothing that I didn't see coming. The plot twists also come out of thin air sometimes. I couldn't really root for either of the main characters because they were both having an affair, and that's just not cool. I liked the inventive and super neat technology. I also thought Emmett was the most interesting character. Her backstory just seems added on at the last minute. The ending was so rushed that I felt like I must be missing a chapter. I'm all for an open-ended book, but this just felt unfinished instead of intentionally ambiguous. It did not live up to my expectations, but the concepts are interesting and there are definitely people it will appeal to.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC. All opinions are my own.

I was drawn in by the dystopian vibes but overall didn’t feel like the plot was very intriguing. Characters didn’t really flesh out.

This book explored intriguing themes! However, I had a hard time connecting with the story and that is obviously on me and not the book. I recognize that it has great potential to appeal to other mystery/thriller dystopian lovers and I encourage others to try it out! Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book.

This started out strong (with The Circle-style vibes) but seemed to fall apart for me. I loved the settings and world-building. I also loved the style (emails, chapter titles/dates) but the characters were tough to connect with.

I adored this book! I usually don’t read sci fi but i found the premise really interesting and decided to give it a try. I really loved the queerness of it all, especially during pride month. I also really love reading about mothers and daughters and strained relationships and this book had a lot of that

This was just meh for me. The story was messy at times and overly predictable. The ending was not satisfying. I think I would have preferred more detail and backstory.

TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter (don’t call it X), Facebook. Being online and accessible 24/7 seems to be a requirement, even as the actual apps go in and out of favor. Congress wants to ban TikTok; no one under 40 is on Facebook anymore. What will these devices and apps look like in the future? Will we all have chips implanted in our brains, or will the vast divide between haves and have-nots reserve the best communication for the upper upper classes? Will we have robots, or be replaced by them?

In Leslie Stephens’s debut novel, You’re Safe Here, a California decades in the future has married the latest technology with the wellness craze to create a world where devices rule everything, from food to exercise to sleep, and record a person’s every moment. Emmett, CEO of WellCorp, is anxious over her new WellPods, ocean-faring vessels that isolate guests on the Pacific Ocean while providing their every need. Maggie, six weeks pregnant, is excited to be one of its first users. Noa, Maggie’s girlfriend and a programmer on the WellPods project, feels guilty about an affair and ignoring Maggie. But when she discovers the WellPods could be dangerous and a huge storm is coming, Noa will do anything to keep Maggie safe.

You’re Safe Here takes place in 2060, and Stephens does a thorough job detailing every storm, earthquake, and social media app that happens between now and then. There’s a huge gap between the technological advancements that enable inventions like WellPods and the environmental disasters that have left parts of the country in ruins. Air travel is practically non-existent because of the huge costs and environmental damage, but WellCorp has a modern campus that provides a high-tech apartment, shuttle to work, and all amenities a person could need. Later in the novel, Maggie remembers leaving the campus with the father of her baby and driving around Los Angeles, and the description of the ruined city is haunting.

Emmett, Maggie, and Noa are all third-person point-of-view characters, and for the latter two, Stephens goes into great detail about their back stories—so much so that at times, I was a little bored. And with Maggie and Noa both cheating on each other, I didn’t root for their relationship like I wanted to.

Thrillers and domestic suspense are built upon twists, and Stephens absolutely delivers on that end. But readers also invest in books because they’re drawn in by “the promise of the premise.” While Stephens sets up an amazing technological world that’s battered by climate change, she does not follow through with the element that made me pick up the book, twisting away from it instead. Although Stephens is a wonderful writer, with an amazing imagination, smooth prose, and dimensional characters, she does not deliver a “HAL” like WellPod, malfunctioning while it’s assaulted by hurricane waves. The ending is more soapy than sci-fi, and I was disappointed.

I went into You’re Safe Here thinking it was a scifi dystopian book. It was definitely scifi but it was more of a contemporary scifi.

I’m not a big reader of the contemporary genre, but I stayed because of the futuristic sci-fi technology which wasn’t all that far fetched. With enough money, I could see it becoming plausible in the very near future.

The story goes back and forth between 3 women. Maggie, newly pregnant but not with her fiancée’s child, Noa, Maggie’s fiancée who is off having an affair and works too much, and Emmett, the designer of the tech.

Maggie goes off as part of the soft launch of a wellness pod deep in the ocean where she’ll be completely alone for six weeks with everything she could possibly need while she contemplates her future. Noa discovers that not all is as it seems with the Wellness pods or the company and goes to any length possible to rescue Maggie from an unsafe situation.

All in all I’m glad I stayed with it, because the end had some great reveals. The future tech was really fun for me.

*Thank you so much to Gallery/Scout Press and NetGalley for the gifted eGalley!*

You're Safe Here was quite ambitious, and took a lot of turns I definitely did not expect. I loved the twistiness of it, but wished that certain parts had been focused on a bit more. The story starts off a bit slow. We're following Maggie, who is pregnant and in a pod in the Pacific Ocean, and Noa, Maggie's partner who has parted with her on not-so-great terms, but is not in a pod in the middle of the ocean so I feel like she's winning? Anyway. We're getting to know their current situations, and then how they got to this particular point where one of them decided isolated pod life was the better option to their current status. We also follow (to a somewhat lesser, at arm's length extent) Emmett, who is a tech wizard and the brain behind the pods.

Things pick up, and they pick up a lot, mostly during the second half of the book. I didn't mind the quieter first half, but I'll also say I was definitely more invested when the action (and the stakes) were well and truly upped halfway through. The twists that began to happen were amazing, and they definitely propelled me to keep turning the pages. My qualm, really, is that in introducing a lot of cool twists, the end felt too rushed- and too unanswered. I think it needed a few more chapters to really round out all the threads it started.

Bottom Line: Loved the twisty bits, loved the concept, just wish it had answered all the questions it had me asking!

This was an interesting sci-fi speculative thriller set in a near future where technology is very advanced, the world has been devastated by climate change and a woman tech guru a la Steve Jobs esque has created a special "Wellness" Pod that allows people to escape life and take a break while being isolated and supported in a special dome set out in the ocean. At times bizarre, I thought this was good on audio and I really enjoyed the queer female MCs, the motherhood aspects and the unique vision of the future. Recommended for fans of dystopian/climate change fiction. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

**Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the eARC of this title.**

I really wanted this one to work for me, and it had all the makings of being a perfect read. Futuristic sci-fi with dystopian vibes? Check. Multiple POV with thriller elements? Check.

Unfortunately, this one fell really flat in execution for me and I found myself barely trotting along to get this one read. The characters were awful and I think a big part of this was that Noa was a cheater and I'm supposed to feel bad for her struggles?

I think this book will work for people that enjoy literary fiction and women's fiction with dystopian vibes. To be fair this one is labeled as "general fiction" and I shouldn't have read so much into the scifi and thrillers vibes in the synopsis.

I'm sure this book has a perfect audience - I'm just not apart of it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this advanced copy. It's 2060 and the Wellpod is launched. It is your own personal paradise. But it doesn't seem as safe as Noa thought. There was too much science and technology for my mind, but it's probably just me. I absolutely love this plot!

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy of this book. I was very excited for You're Safe Here and there are some aspects of the book that are well done, but ultimately it was just medium for me. The premise of the book and the themes seemed very promising, but I didn't feel the characters were well enough developed to really hold my interest and there wasn't a lot of new ground beyond what I've seen covered in other books have dealt with theme of tech, female founders, motherhood etc. It reminded me a little of Yours for the Taking and had some similar elements to Anna Bright is Hiding Something (not set in the future, but females in tech etc).