A wry and tenderhearted novel about a couple who attempt to buy their way into a “wild and precious” existence in the Hudson Valley, where they quickly become entangled with a queer couple living the dream analog life
Newlywed Rosie has grown disenchanted with NYC. Inspired by Instagram ads, she starts thirsting for a rural life upstate—one full of beauty and authenticity. She just needs to convince her tech-bro husband, Jordan, of her vision for the future. Willing to do anything for Rosie’s happiness, Jordan signs on, and they offer—well above asking price—on a beautiful, historic fixer-upper in the Hudson Valley.
But when Jordan suddenly loses his job, the couple is forced to rent out the property’s dilapidated outbuilding. There’s no heat, it’s overrun with mold, and nothing works.
Enter Dylan and an incredibly attractive and handy queer couple who offer to rent the outbuilding and help Rosie and Jordan with repairs. They also happen to be living the life Rosie had envisioned for hand-built furniture, herbal tinctures, guinea hens, and hand-dyed linens. Rosie grows increasingly infatuated with their new tenants, especially with model-esque, charismatic Dylan — to Jordan’s increasing distress.
Whip-smart and wickedly funny, Trust and Safety examines questions of authenticity, betrayal, belonging, and entitlement, while poking fun at contemporary fear of the “gay agenda.”
“Sexy, surprising, witty and beautifully written—Trust and Safety is a complete delight from start to finish.” —Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author of The Spare Room and We Were Never Here
“Trust and Safety is distressingly smart, wickedly sly, and side-clutchingly hilarious—I was howling! I simply could not turn away. Blackett and Gleichman achieve the best kind of storytelling: the type that forces you to contend with their characters’ choices, then holds up a mirror so you’re implicated in their foibles and bad decision-making—all while demanding that you turn the page because you simply must know how it ends. What a brilliantly observed and witty take on the sometimes absurd ways we choose to live. And how blessedly and wonderfully gay.” —Vanessa Chan, author of The Storm We Made
Blackett and Gleichman have written a laugh-out-loud novel as delightfully heterogeneous in genre as the queer community is in gender presentation. What starts out as a wry Noël Coward plot for the digital age swiftly escalates to heights of such passion, longing, and remorse that I felt like I was reading the version of Pride and Prejudice we all want -- namely, where Darcy is a woodsy, stick shift-driving butch. If you want a book that perfectly evokes millennial sexual politics under late-stage capitalism, and in which all of us -- gay, straight, cis, and trans alike -- are read for absolute filth, then look no further than Trust and Safety. —Rafael Frumkin, author of Confidence and Bugsy
