The Escape Room started out well, but seemed to lose steam as the story progressed. While it was still overall an enjoyable read, it didn’t quite live up to it’s potential, or my expectations.

The story is told in alternating chapters between past and present. In the present, we get the third person perspectives of investment bankers Vincent, Jules, Sam, and Sylvie who are stuck in an elevator in what they were led to believe is a team building escape room challenge. The past chapters are from the first person POV of Sara Hall detailing how she came to work at the firm with the others and what it ultimately led to. At first, I had a hard time caring about Sara’s chapters because she felt removed from the more pressing action going on in the elevator. After awhile, though, I became more invested in her.

While I was initially much more interested in what was going on with the group in the elevator, their appeal wore off rather quickly. The clues for the escape room were few and far between and what should have felt suspenseful and nerve-wracking just became a little boring and drawn out. Most of the chapters were made up of character exploration, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but when each and every one of the characters are so detestable, it’s kind of chore to get through. There was absolutely nothing sympathetic or redeeming about any of them. They were all selfish and shallow and manipulative. It made me not care about the stakes because I didn’t really care what happened to any of these characters. I also wish the atmosphere was a little more claustrophobic and stressful. For the most part there was a lot of repetition about how they bumped into each other in the dark and the heater was on really high and it didn’t really do anything for me.

Overall, I did find The Escape Room enjoyable, but it fell a little flat for me. The character development was really well done. I just wish that any of characters were worth caring about. I figured out what I think was supposed to be a twist pretty early on in the story and I found the ending a little anticlimactic, as well. However, I think there will be a lot of people that find this a fun summer read and I would be interested in seeing what else Megan Goldin does in the future.

Overall Rating (out of 5): 3 Stars

Definitely not anything close to a psychological thriller--maybe more like a corporate revenge fantasy? It's the book equivalent of watching just about any movie starring Vin Diesel. None of the actual plot makes a lick of sense or is even close to believable, but if you turn off your brain it could be enjoyable, maybe. I personally did not dig anything about this story or the characters. I wish it had more to do with an actual escape room and lived up to its tagline. But no, it's really all just revenge fantasy--and only if you could really see yourself having any positive feelings for a pack of self-centered Wall Street investment bankers. For me though it was a huge let down from its initial promise.

A predictable tale of a sexist and predatory office environment that leads to tragedy.
The plot was ok, felt relatable to modern office life.

A great holiday read and easy to read in just one or two sittings

This book is excellent. I read a lot of suspense and I am always pleasantly surprised when an author does something new and innovative! The Escape Room plays on the team building activities so many of us have done. But this one is not as it seems. Co-workers climbing the high powered ladder of financial success are supposed to be bonding, when everything starts to go terribly wrong. This book was a page turner all the way to the very last page!

Thanks Negalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

The escape room was a based on a very narcissistic group of business executives that took joy in looking down and taking down people they considered less than themselves. They were destroyed with help from one mistreated colleague. It does make you realize how mean adults can be and narcissistic. My attention peaked early in this book, almost too long.

Vincent, Jules, Sylvie and Sam are powerful and ruthless executives in the world of high finance. They love the power and are used to it. After they accept a mandatory invitation to a team-building exercise in an escape room, they find themselves powerless in a high-rise elevator.

This is a very exciting story! Our author begins by telling us the present-day story of our four ultra-powerful characters. Every other chapter, she interrupts the story to tell us about two characters, Sara and Lucy, lower level employees at the same firm. As we learn the past story of these characters, slowly building toward the present-day, we learn more about the four trapped in the elevator. Little-by-little, we learn why the four executives are trapped and powerless.

The character development in this story is amazing, and Megan Goldin’s method of building tension really works. I’ll bet you can’t put down this book! I couldn’t! This would make an amazing movie!

Vincent, Jules, Sam, and Sylvie are stuck in an elevator after being told they were coming for a corporate escape room. What they don't realize is that it'll be the last time they see each other alive. They are locked inside an elevator that is hovering stories above the ground floor, unable to escape. To be able to get out, they have to follow different clues and work together. But that's hard when you're all from a wealthy business where you're not supposed to trust your partners. The longer that they stay in the elevator, the more they learn about each other, and what they learn isn't good.

This novel is such a good thriller, it's definitely going to be one of the best ones this summer. Definitely an un-put-downable novel with the amount of plot twists that are infused inside.

Fast paced, unique thriller about greed. A bit unbelievable and hokey, but intersting enough to keep me turning pages. A gluttonous beach read.

What a deliciously evil book! Megan Goldin reveals this plot from two distinct viewpoints, one inside an elevator with four co-workers from Wall Street, the other from former co-worker Sara’s viewpoint, who thankfully is not participating in the team building event.
As the terms of the Escape Room game become more evident and the controls of the elevator completely ignore the panel functions, (almost like it has a mind of its own), tensions between the four very distinct personalities elevate to extreme and dangerous levels. What started out as a silly game quickly escalates.
Meanwhile, we meet Sara and learn about her experience working with this company. Not all is as golden as she hoped it would be making big bucks and living the high life. But what do these two viewpoints have in common?
That’s the turmoil that keeps you up, turning the pages, guessing the plot then realizing that yet again you’re wrong. A fun, enjoyable and completely evil plot!
(I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you to Jordan at St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for making it available.)

This book was addictive and had me on the edge of my seat. It is not my normal read, but I seriously enjoyed it. I can't wait to see what's next from Megan. She has definitely become an author I will be reading more from.

This was a surprise. I expected an escape room premise to be silly. It was a lot of fun but had more of a story than I expected.

Review: THE ESCAPE ROOM by Meagan Goldin. Reviewing for Netgalley. When an elevator is set up as an Escape room the corporate big dogs will have to try to use their wits and hopefully trust in each other to escape. Excellent book! A fun rollercoaster ride of deceit and greed where everyone wants to win. A fantastic author that I will be following to see what her next masterpiece will be.

Escape Room finds 4 investment bankers in an elevator that has been turned into an escape room. It is not an ordinary escape room and they have to figure out how to escape with their lives.

5 stars for entertainment value alone. This is a well written wild ride of a novel. I read it in less than 24 hours. Characters you love to hate and you have to figure out what the truth is.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC for my honest review.

I really wanted to enjoy this book because of the description, but I found it very difficult to get into, the beginning is very slow and none of the characters were likeable. Unfortunately I was not able to finish it.

I’m afraid that there was too much unnecessary text for my liking. Too much information. Too much details... I got bored and DNF it.

Thanks Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this title.

Title: The Escape Room 
Author: Megan Goldin
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Date of Publication: July 30, 2019
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Synopsis
Four Wall Street finance hot shots are invited by their company to an escape room.  How bad can it be? The rules are simple: Solve the puzzles to escape. They quickly discover that this escape room is unlike any other: it’s in a cramped elevator.  The puzzles are also different from typical escape rooms. The questions are personal... and the stakes are high. There’s also one puzzle that’s up for the reader to solve. Which one of them is a killer?

Plot
The Escape Room is gripping from its very first page.  The writing is fast-paced and engaging.  While characters are fleshed out quite nicely and there is a lot of description and introspection, the plot never lags. Every word serves a special purpose, drawing the reader deeper and deeper into the pages.

There are two timelines in the novel. There’s the one with the escape room. Sylvie, Jules, Sam, and Vincent all work on the same team at Stanhope, a top-tier finance company.  The company has lost some big clients in the last quarter, and all four of them are worried about losing their jobs. And when they receive a strange invitation to an escape room, how can they to refuse?  

The second timeline follows Sara Hall as she gets her first job out of her MBA at Stanhope. She had wanted to become a doctor, but her parents are sick, and she needed a job that would pay right away so that she could cover their medical bills.  Once she arrives at Stanhope, she’s assigned to work closely with Sylvie, Jules, Sam, and Vincent…

Both timelines are engaging and fit seamlessly together. There are many little cliffhangers at the end of chapters that left me reading way past my bedtime.  The novel also has a lot of commentary on sexism in the workplace.  The world of finance is a particularly bad culprit for this.

My only complaint is that the escape room clues are a little on the nose. I found it a little unrealistic that these high-flying finance geniuses couldn’t solve the puzzles with a quick glance.  The first puzzle made sense--they wouldn’t expect it to be personal.  But after that?  One of the clues was a riddle that I heard and thought was clever in elementary school. The fact that it was a clue for adults made me chuckle.

Setting
As mentioned before, the novel is set at a top-tier finance firm on Wall Street.  Everything that Goldin writes emphasizes this. She does a lot of designer brand name dropping, which accentuates this quite nicely. She also does something that a lot of books don’t do--by putting price tags on everything.  Salaries, the cost of designer suits, etc. is all spelled out for the reader. For the average person like me, the cost of things was slightly stressful, which I think was the author's purpose. Sara doesn’t have much money, and a lot of what she’s making has to go back to pay her parents’ medical bills and their rent, this writing technique instills the anxiety that Sara Hall feels about money into the reader.  Also, it made me think that maybe I should go back to school for an MBA.  

Characters
Sara Hall gets the first-person POV scenes.  She's clearly the main character. She has quite a bit of character development, and she is a likeable and relatable protagonist.  Goldin shows the deterioration of her relationship with her family as Sara becomes more and more caught up in the world of finance.  The four people trapped in the elevator, on the other hand, are not at all likeable, which is clearly the point that the author was trying to make.  Vincent, Sam, Jules, and Sylvie are each loathsome in a unique way that has nothing to do with the fact that they’re money-grubbing and ambitious to a fault. This should have made each of the characters interchangeable (aren’t all Wall Street types the same?), but Goldin distinguishes them quite nicely in their flaws, with their complicated pasts, intriguing presents and uncertain futures.

I recommend this book to anyone looking for an intense and quick read.  If you’re a slower reader, you shouldn’t pick this up too close to bedtime, or you’ll never get to sleep.

*Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for the ARC for review*

I'm normally not drawn to the synopsis of a book, I'm more of a cover gal, but when I read the blurb for The Escape Room I had to have it. I was instantly drawn to this book and wanted to read it immediately. I'm thankful to my friends at St. Martin's Press allowed me a review copy!

The first 30% of this book was tough for me. I found absolutely no redeeming qualities in any of the characters and absolutely loathed reading about the ruthless business and finance world. In this story, it's a world in which people chose money and self above all else, including ethics and morals. This is a lifestyle entirely different from everything I value in life and I found it irksome to read about such vile characters.

Thankfully Sara's perspective rescued the story for me. She was hardworking, likable, and I enjoyed reading about her experiences working at Stanhope. She comes across as the exact opposite of her colleagues, yet she still finds herself sucked into the deplorable world of self-indulgence. It was interesting to see the slow corruption that took place and the suspense of how she might rectify it as the story drew on.

I liked how the message of unfair wages and inequality was added to this plot as well. The author addressed the discrimination many people face in the workplace in a relatable way, rather than making it political. I really appreciated how she handled the subject matter, making the reader root against unfairness.

The ending of this story was everything I didn't know I needed. It was the ultimate justice for a group of characters everyone will love to hate, characters that reminded me of all too many people I know in real life. It was something that made me want to stand up and cheer in the end because books like this one rarely have the type of ending I desire. Ultimately, the twist at the conclusion helped me to decide to bump up my star rating simply because it fueled my excitement for this book as a whole. I was impressed.

Unfortunately, readers, you'll be waiting a while longer for this book. It doesn't release until July 30th, but I don't think this will be one you will forget about. I'm sure there will be plenty of hype to lead up to the release.

An engaging book that I enjoyed but have to admit, didn’t love. I’m clearly in the minority though.

Loved this book and stayed up til the wee hours of the morning two nights in a row to binge read it.

Strong female protagonist Sara Hall experiences the crazy brutal world of corporate finance all wrapped up in an escape room mystery set in an elevator. The plot pacing and writing was all fantastic and though I suspected a big part of where it was headed there were plenty of surprises to keep me guessing until the end. The characters are all well developed and I loved the style of alternate chapters of the main story and Saras background.

Highly recommended and I would definitely read more of Goldin's books just based how good this one was.

5 stars for a fun, fun, fun read. I thoroughly enjoyed The Escape Room. Megan Goldin did a phenomenal job of putting the reader into a stifling, pitch black metal box . . . in a deserted building . . . no cell service or emergency phone . . . surrounded three of your closest work enemies!!! I felt the suffocation with every fiber of my being.

This was one of the best psychological thrillers I've read in a long time, and I'll definitely be looking for more books by Goldin. The action is balls to the wall fast paced, and the characters were all beautifully developed. I flew through it.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. This is a winner!