And it's just a dead end road at the end of the day: SAFE AND SOUND.

Safe and Sound by Laura McHugh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another superbly written story from Laura McHugh, dropping you directly into a small Missouri town. The residents there know they are born in the local hospital and live and die in town, ending up buried in its cemetery. Grace dreamed of getting out--and she wanted that for her young nieces, Amelia and Kylee, too. But then Grace disappears, with just a trail of blood left behind, and the two girls are stuck.

As she ages, Amelia wonders what happened to Grace, poking around the corners of her secretive town. McHugh does an excellent job creating an atmosphere of claustrophobia, flashing back to Grace's story and her own feelings of being trapped, and then Amelia's deep desires to get out. The whole book feels stifling, overcome with the brittle feeling of no hope or prospects. McHugh's writing is crisp, starkly portraying her teenage characters with clarity and realism.

Sometimes things even feel too real--this book can feel awfully hopeless. The ending is a bummer, without a lot of closure. But the story is well-written, with nuanced characters, and it perfectly captures that oppressive small town feeling.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Random House in return for an unbiased review.

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