Title: The Escape Room
Author: Megan Goldin
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Format: Suspense, Psychological Thriller
No. of Pages: 368
Date of Publication: July 30, 2019
Description: Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive.
In the lucrative world of finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are at the top of their game. They’ve mastered the art of the deal and celebrate their success in style―but a life of extreme luxury always comes at a cost.
Invited to participate in an escape room challenge as a team-building exercise, the ferociously competitive co-workers crowd into the elevator of a high-rise building, eager to prove themselves. But when the lights go off and the doors stay shut, it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary competition: they’re caught in a dangerous game of survival.
Trapped in the dark, the colleagues must put aside their bitter rivalries and work together to solve cryptic clues to break free. But as the game begins to reveal the team’s darkest secrets, they realize there’s a price to be paid for the terrible deeds they committed in their ruthless climb up the corporate ladder. As tempers fray, and the clues turn deadly, they must solve one final chilling puzzle: which one of them will kill in order to survive?
My Thoughts: This is Megan Goldin's debut book and I have to say Wow. It is very well written. It has a ton of twists built into the plot itself. When you finally hit the climax of the book, all you can think is "I didn't see that coming". The characters are well written and it is easy to follow them throughout the story.
I do have to say that when I was first offered a chance to read this book, I was unsure if I wanted too. I am not a big finance person and was concerned that it would be too heavily in finance and hard to understand. However, I did not find this to be the case. Even though the story follows investors and their day to day in their jobs, it is super easy to follow. Megan does not use a ton of finance jargon where you would feel like you would have to look up the word to even know what they were talking about. Even though she does not use a ton finance jargon, she does use some not familiar words where I had to look up what they meant. I am a smart person and have a masters degree, so this detracted me from the story a little when I had to look up what certain words meant.
I also have to say that I am not a big fan of prologues because often I find that by the time you finish it and start reading chapter one that the two do not connect easily. This was not the case with the prologue to this book though. It was easy to follow. The same goes for the chapters of the books. Megan alternates each chapters point of view between Sara Halls and those trapped in the elevator/escape room. Each chapter is clearly marked with whose point of view the chapter is being told in. The chapters that are from the point of view of those trapped in the elevator, Sam, Jules, Sylvie, and Vincent, are all in the present tense. Sara Hall's starts from the past and slowly works its way to the present. Sara's chapters help tie in what is going on in the elevator by providing the important back story.
My favorite character of the entire book was Lucy as it shines a light on to mental health. Lucy is extremely intelligent and was diagnoses with autism as a young child. She is considered to have high functioning autism and her co-workers at Stanhope see and treat her very differently. She does connect with one co-worker though.
Rating: I'm only giving this book 4 stars out of the 5. I'm giving it this writing because I find the difficult words to understand as well as the few spelling/grammatical errors to detract from the story line itself. I am looking forward to seeing what else Megan Goldin comes out with and hope that they are only as good or even better then The Escape Room.
About the Author: Megan Goldin is the author of The Escape Room, a 2019 thriller that Lee Child called "one of my favorite books of the year" and Harlan Coben called "thrilling and unforgettable". Megan's new novel The Night Swim will be released in August 2020. Before becoming a novelist, Megan worked as a reporter covering the Middle East and Asia for the Reuters news agency, the Associate Press and the ABC as well as other news outlets.
Thank
you St. Martin's Press for the book. This is my honest opinion.
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