Trust and Safety is a satirical novel about a newlywed couple who buy a dilapidated house to fix up, only to find themselves out of their depth. Rosie is fed up with New York City, having seen too many Instagram ads for a rural lifestyle, and when she finds a house for sale, her tech lawyer husband Jordan agrees to go in on her vision of their future. It needs fixing, though, and without money, they take on tenants to live in (and do up) the old outbuilding. These tenants are queer couple Dylan and Lark, who seem to be much better at living the life Rosie wanted, and Rosie finds herself attracted to Dylan, but Jordan isn't so sure, and their future might not be as set out as expected.

After having not really enjoyed Blackett and Gleichman's previous novel, The Very Nice Box, I thought I'd give Trust and Safety a go because the summary sounded like it might be better. The opening sets up the elements you might expect: fed up woman who works canvassing for an LGBTQ charity even though it's terrible, her tech bro husband who works for a company making a voice assistant, an interfering mother-in-law, the protagonist's one city friend who doesn't know why she's moving to the countryside. Once they move, there's suddenly the new cast of characters, because it's a town where the only people you ever see are all part of the same polycule, it seems, and there's the hot butch one and the quirky herbalist one and a trans man who is a farmer and a cashier with a child (the latter two seem to have no other personality traits). So, essentially, you can tell it is a satirical novel.

The elements of the book that poke fun at the entitled idea that anyone can suddenly live a rural lifestyle, making their own things and doing up a house, do work well, and the tension between Rosie's idea of an entirely new life and Jordan's idea of transplanting an NYC lifestyle directly into this rural location provides the different sides of the coin and drives the plot between them forward. At the same time, the book looks at queerness and polyamory, particularly what it might mean for a seemingly (at least to her husband) straight woman to want this lifestyle, and also some elements of the reality of living in a polycule. Because it is satire, however, it isn't really very nuanced, and there's some very unbelievable elements to it (for example, Rosie worked for an LGBTQ charity in New York City and yet didn't think she'd ever knowingly met a trans person before - even counting for obliviousness, she surely would've), which limit how much it can explore what it might be like to desire a different kind of life to what you have.

There's a whole bunch of other slightly satirical elements in the book—the annoying voice assistant element, Jordan's new tech start up about drone delivery of sperm, the slightly incest-vibes mother-in-law thing—that don't really have a point, and in that way it reminded me of The Very Nice Box: the stuff that is meant to be poking fun at sometimes doesn't quite work because it isn't explored enough. The plot twists are quite mundane—I was expecting it to go weirder—and though I found the storytelling fairly gripping, the ending is quite a let down, not really going anywhere at all. This does, however, work as a satire, but as a book with characters you might actually want to see develop or change, it isn't satisfying, so it is a book that mostly works if you just want everyone to be written as part of the joke.

The book is marketed as poking fun at authenticity and entitlement, as well as fear of the gay agenda, and whilst I think it does okay at the former (if never really going anywhere with it), the latter element isn't really how it came across to me. If anything, the book satirises straightness, but it never really addresses fear of some "gay agenda" or, more accurately, queerness and polyamory, as instead it makes everyone seem a bit terrible and doesn't really address why Rosie wanted to live like the queer couple or why she wanted to explore her own queerness. In fact, the joke really is that Rosie's queerness only really exists in relation to the woman she finds hot, and the ending could've done more to play with this depiction. Also, I think some of the stuff around gender could've been more interestingly done, with just some jokes about it being the cis "straight" couple fumbling around sharing pronouns, and then the one character shown explicitly to be trans in the book has basically no personality other than a job. I've read plenty of good witty moments in books exploring people's ideas around gender and queerness and transness, but this book didn't do anything like that.

Basically, at times this book was fun, at times the satire didn't really work, and by the end, it was just a bit disappointing. It was gripping and easy to read and there's plenty of fun details, but by the end I was just wondering 'why?' and wished it had deeper engagement with some of the stuff it was satirising. Ironically (or, I suppose, maybe purposefully?) it felt like it could possibly work as a kind of safari, for straight monogamous people to read and be confirmed that a queer polycule would be bad, without really delving into why that was the case in this book. I do think that people will like the fact that is does play around with the idea of moving to the countryside to be in a queer polycule, because despite internet jokes there isn't really much of that in fiction.

I'm sorry but WHAT THE FUCK???? Genuinely what the fuck did I just read? This is what passes for a romance????

Trust and Safety starts off with Rosie and Jordan's wedding and their lives in New York. Jordan works at a tech firm with fake Alexa's (and no, its inclusion was never funny nor did it add anything), and Rosie canvases for an LGBT company. She quits her job after being SAd on the streets (which Jordan asks her to go back to after he's fired from fake Amazon). Lost and hopeless, searching for another life, she pins all her dreams on a countryside fixeruper. They win the auction but soon figure out they can't afford it and have no clue what they’re doing, and so rent out space to Dylan and Lark, handy queers who will fix the place up whilst living there.

I have so many questions, most of which I can't ask without revealing spoilers (there's some minor spoilers ahead whilst revealing the details), but why oh why did they never get a fucking divorce??

The book starts off really boring and mundane, with a lot of weird mother-son emotional incest. The whole thing was gross, and Jordan (and his family) IS THE WORST. That leaves Rosie to ping-pong around people whilst desperate for the family she never had, all whilst Jordan is pressuring her to have a baby and live the life he wants. THEN he fucking betrays her in an incredibly gross way and she stays?? All of the ending chapters were ?????? and whilst I hate Jordan, Rosie needed to actually fucking communicate. The ending was fucking depressing. Poor Rosie.

Also, of course the queer polycule was secretly evil. Fucking of course

This was a disgusting mess. I found the writing boring and tiresome (and I kept having to reread bits bc it was so boring I'd drift). Calling fake Alexa 'family friend' was just irritating and WHY THE HELL WAS IT INCLUDED? For a dyke joke?

I cannot express how mad I am at this book. Have you ever met a queer person? Or any real human person? EVERYONE WAS AWFUL

I really enjoyed this book overall, funny and loving, the queerness definitely made me fall in love with it more.