Title: The Escape Room
Author: Megan Goldin
Genre: Thriller, Fiction
Publication Date: July 30, 2019
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4 stars)
‘Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive.’
In the lucrative world of Wall Street finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie and Sam are the ultimate high-flyers. Ruthlessly ambitious, they make billion-dollar deals and live lives of outrageous luxury. Getting rich is all that matters, and they’ll do anything to get ahead.
When the four of them become trapped in an elevator escape room, things start to go horribly wrong. They have to put aside their fierce office rivalries and work together to solve the clues that will release them. But in the confines of the elevator the dark secrets of their team are laid bare. They are made to answer for profiting from a workplace where deception, intimidation and sexual harassment thrive.
Tempers fray and the escape room’s clues turn more and more ominous, leaving the four of them dangling on the precipice of disaster. If they want to survive, they’ll have to solve one final puzzle: which one of them is a killer?
The Escape Room is a fun and breezy guilty pleasure read about four coworkers who find themselves trapped in an elevator escape room. It isn’t long before the claustrophobic confines start to shed light on all their darkest secrets. Although this isn’t quite a twisty mystery or psychological thriller, it still keeps you on your toes and is an enjoyable novel.
The plot is told in two threads, the first being an omniscient present timeline that spans the twenty four hours trapped in the elevator. Up close and personal, it’s clear to see that all four characters are simply despicable people. They’re greedy and manipulative, quick to knock each other down as they claw their way to the top.
The second timeline spans the past several years and is told in the first-person perspective of an ex-coworker pointedly missing from the present. Sara Hall’s voice was often a much-needed breath of fresh air from the ruthlessness crammed into the elevator. The two narratives complemented each other well with sections that were short and succinct, revealing just enough to leave you hungry for more and then flipping back to the other timeline.
There’s nothing flowery or figurative about the prose or dialogue. Everything is as blunt and to the point as the characters themselves. Often, this can be off-putting in a novel, but the choppy diction and syntax really helped build the tension and desperation that had flooded the elevator by the final pages.
I had fun with this one! If you’re looking for a quick read that’s enjoyable but not too deep, it’s definitely worth checking out The Escape Room.
Warm thanks to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an advance reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.
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