SAFE IN MY ARMS

Three women who are new to a Southern California beach town are found at a crime scene and, as the investigation takes place, seek to hide the secrets that brought them to town.

Andrea Vaughan, a single mom to her son, Arthur; Ronnie Stuckey, mom to Esme; and Lauren Smith, mom to Matthew, are all new to Raisin Beach, a well-to-do community within commuting distance of Los Angeles. Each of their children is a student at the town’s expensive and elite Silver Swans Nursery Academy. But after each of the women receive an anonymous note trying to get them to leave the school, the school’s director, Piper Jovan, is violently attacked and left in a coma. Andrea, Ronnie, and Lauren were in the school’s hallway when it happened, though none of them saw, heard, or remembers exactly what transpired. And all three have secrets they're trying to hide—and so does Piper. The story unspools from the various women’s perspectives as they try to keep their pasts from public eyes. The secrets are both large and small, deeply hidden and almost transparent: a kidnapped child, embezzlement, work as a stripper, postpartum rage, being wealthy, and being transgender, among others. More than a narrative, the story splits and diverts into many streams before easing back to those few days that pass between the attack on Piper and the resolution of the police investigation. Coincidences abound, and readers are asked to take the deus ex machina moments without questioning the unlikelihood of their occurrences.

While there are parallels to Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, this volume doesn’t reach the same heights.