"Welcome to the Escape Room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive."

Escape rooms can be really fun and right now they are all over the place and getting pretty creative. The premise is simple enough. A group of people locked in a room. Together they must look at clues that will allow them to escape. The clues are rarely straight forward and more than once will have you backtracking. In the real world if you run out of time, they just let you out and you can do the walk of shame.

This isn't that type of story. In this story four very competitive co-workers are told that on this Friday evening they will be participating in an escape room challenge. None of them wants to do any team building exercises, but they also want to keep their jobs and the money that goes with those jobs, so they show up in a building that is undergoing construction, waiting for an elevator to take them to the escape room.

Little do they know as the elevator rises to the 70th floor that they are already in the escape room. And for the next few days all of their dirty little secrets, failings and crimes come out and they must all deal with their own shameful behaviors. And most importantly, which one of them is a killer?

Yes we find out at the end who was running the show. But I have to say it was a rather unsatisfying end.

Netgalley/ July 30th 2019 by St. Martin's Press

Escape rooms are one of todays trendy forms of entertainment. People join together to be locked into a room where they will examine clues that will lead them to finding the escape from the room. It is a fun experience as clues are examined, interpreted and sometimes misinterpreted leading to a dead end. Then its back to reexamine what you know or think you know. At the end of an allotted time period you have either found your way out or you suffer the embarrassment of having to be let out by the game masters.
A fun activity for friends is not the escape room Megan Goldin presents in her novel, The Escape Room.
Four coworkers are summoned to an escape room challenge for what they assume is a team building exercise sponsored by their employer. Though it is Friday evening and each has plans, they show up. Their firm is facing retrenchment and each of the four fears for their position. They stand before the elevator in an under construction building waiting to be taken to the escape room.
Little do they know that the elevator itself is the escape room. Over the next several days - yes days not hours - each member will face their weaknesses, their failures and their demons as they struggle to determine who is keeping them trapped in the elevator and why. Perched on the 70th floor of an empty building in a stifling elevator, their interactions devolve into accusations and threats.
Ultimately we learn who is controlling the elevator cables and why. There is however no face to face confrontation between the four people on the elevator and the person who brought them there. The omission left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. I wanted the four to definitely know who was responsible for their enforced examination of past transgressions and why.
Escape Room is a worthwhile read as the relationships between all parties are fully developed. The controller of the elevator was seeking revenge. You can decide if that was the final outcome.
I received an advance copy of this book from Netgalley. #NetGalley #EscapeRoom

Good plot with interesting characters from an investment bank. Got hooked in the first chapter and finished it in one day. Look forward to reading more by Megan Goldin.

A surprising good read. The synopsis didn't grab me, but after the first chapter, I was hooked. Nice character development, clear division between characters, and some unexpected emotions tossed in those chapters. Interesting how the relationship changed between Vincent and Sara, and while a couple of things happened that I wasn't sure really would, well - that's fiction. Good escalation of events and I loved the friendship build between Lucy and Sara. All in all, I was glad I read this book and do recommend it. Not sure how I'd be with all that money to entice me, but I'd sure like to give it a try.

Thank you NetGalley and St Martin's Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book caught my attention because I kept seeing a lot of buzz on it in a reader's group that I belong to. Everyone was saying what a great ride this was. It is not a story that I would typically be drawn to. But I'm so happy that I listened to everyone's recommendations and decided to request this book.

This is a fast paced thriller that will draw you in from chapter 1. At first, I was a little worried that the whole story would take place in one location leaving me bored. The author used alternating narrators and timelines to remedy that to keep the reader intrigued. This novel succeeded in keeping my attention from beginning to end and I easily read it all in one day.

I will say the first 70% of the book was incredible, the last 30 % be came a little too unbelievable which is how my review ended up a 4 instead of a 5.

Megan Goldin did an amazing job, she's a great writer, and I look forward to reading other books of her in the future! I really hope this gets made into a TV series or a movie.

Relatively well-written. The story really feels like it’s missing something, though. It may also just be me, but I found the ending very unsatisfying.

Intricately plotted. Captivating premise. Hard to put down.
I really enjoy this author. Looking forward to more from her.

LOVED 👏🏼THIS 👏🏼BOOK👏🏼.

The Escape Room is categorized as a psychological thriller, my favorite genre, but it’s really just a well-written thrill ride.

"Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive."

Halfway through I was 100% sure I solved the mystery, and was already thinking how I’d mention that I adored the book and it’s phenomenal writing despite figuring it out early on. And I WAS WRONG!

This book is slightly about an escape room, and mostly the story of a young, bright woman whose first job out of college is making billion-dollar deals on Wall Street, and the high stakes, fascinating, ruthless and greedy life her colleagues lead.

I could not put it down, which says a lot considering I DNF’d several popular books this month. 😒

Thank you, @netgalley And @macmillanusa for an advanced copy!

The Escape Room by Megan Goldin was a great, fast paced read. I knew nothing of this book or author before reading this book. I will definitely read her again! If you are a fan of alternating timelines you will definitely not want to skip this one. Thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm a big fan of escape rooms in real life and was intrigued by the description of this book. However, there is so much more to this book than the back cover lets on.

There are two storylines that are being told in alternating chapters: the present-day escape room scenario and the lead up to what caused these characters to end up in this situation. I really don't want to say too much to give away spoilers, but both plot lines are equally important to each other. There are a ton of twists, none that are too predictable.

The four characters who are trapped in the escape room are not very likable, but this is by design. I really had a Saw 6 vibe as I read this book (but without the excessive gore). Highly recommend this book to fans of psychological thrillers.

Book given in exchange for a review through NetGalley.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview The Escape Room by Megan Goldin.
WOW - this is a nail biter. This story has two time lines - The Wall Street Executives and Sara.

A prestigious Wall Street Firm recruits a young woman, Sara, to work in a cut throat environment - it is Sara's dream come true. She has worked her whole life to be part of a company that will reward her for the hard work she is capible of doing - Welcome to Stanhope in the heart of NY City.
Sara quickly learns that the team she works with are willing and able to crush her if she makes any mistakes. Sara works hard and is starting to make headway with this tough group of Wall Streeters.
The team, lead by Vincent, has their place in the firm. This includes a young autistic woman, Lisa, that Sara befriends. Lisa doesn't want Sara to tell anyone they are friends, and Sara finds this strange but goes along with it. Lisa committs suicide, and Sara is soon fired.
In real time, An email is sent to the Wall Streeters telling them to meet on a Friday evening after hours for an important meeting. They are angy, but consent to meet. They enter an elevator in their building, but they don't get out - It's an escape room. At first, they are not concerned, but as time goes on and they don't see themselves getting out, they become an angry group - one that will tell their secrets, lies, and anything else just to survive.
The plot goes back in forth to Sara's story to the Wall Streeters in the elevator - quickly things begin to unravel in the elevator and you can feel the "heat" as the four individuals divulge their darkest fears to each other. Will they get out - ALIVE?
Great book and very current - I liked this alot. It is one of my favorites so far this year. Great ending....
RECOMMEND.

‘Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive.’

This book is a treat.

No, it’s not going to solve world hunger or bring peace to the land, but it will entertain the absolute shit out of you, and don’t we all need a little bit of that magic these days?

Alternating between the past and present, The Escape Room is a deftly plotted tale of revenge, and revenge is never sweeter than when the people receiving it really, really deserve what’s coming to them.

The scene: four people are in an elevator in a building under construction. It’s flying toward the top floor, binding them all to a meeting they don’t know anything about. Each of these four people are tightly wound, high-flying business types, each with their own secrets, malicious thoughts, baggage, selfish hopes, dreams of better, more – more money, more love, more freedom – and they all know each other. Perhaps a bit too well. When the elevator comes to a halt, they realize that what they thought was a ‘meeting’ is actually a team-building exercise.

The elevator has become their own personal escape room, and they have to answer riddles in order to be let out of the elevator before the hour is up. Believing this is a test to keep their jobs, they get to work unraveling the scant, frustrating clues. Already fractious, their tempers fray as their personalities clash and it becomes apparent that something a bit more sinister is going on. The temperature is rising, the clues are impossible, and why aren’t the doors opening when the hour is up?

Between these bites of suffocating tension, Goldin tells another story – Sara’s story. A young financial analyst, Sara begins working at Stanhope & Sons, a company that thrives on making money, and will do anything to get its clients rich – and its employees even richer. Drunk on the prospect of unlimited income, Sara is willing to drink any sort of Kool-Aid to rise to the top of the wolfpack. As she begins to sacrifice her own ideals, values and even friendships for the sake of the company, she wonders if she’s in over her head. Things take a bloody turn when an associate dies under suspicious circumstances, and Sara wonders if Stanhope & Sons is really all that it seems, and what might be unspooling beneath the surface, rotten and dark.

How these two tales intertwine is fairly obvious from the beginning, but it’s nonetheless fascinating watching how it plays out. It’s one of those books that just makes you feel damn good about life. Perhaps not a morally sound admission, but some people getting their just desserts gave me a little glow of happiness, and I think it will do the same for you.

Revenge is a dish best served … up high, in an elevator, with no way out but down.

Support authors & literacy & imagination! Get your copy of The Escape Room here. (link included in blog and GR)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I really appreciate it!

A thrilling ride, this novel splits time between Sara Hall, a rising financial analyst in New York City and four co-workers trapped in an elevator. Centered around the premise of an "Escape Room," the four co-workers have to solve clues to get out. However, things don't go as planned, and new alliances and betrayals come to light. I read this book in less than two days, as I couldn't wait to find out what happened. A fun, suspenseful novel sure to keep you guessing.

This was an exceptional book. I will probably read it again. If you enjoy thrillers with plot twists then this is definitely the book for you. I thought I had it all figured out in the beginning of the book but I was no where near what ended up happening.

I absolutely loved this book. I will be reading every book written by Megan Goldin. I loved her writing style. She hooked me from the very beginning of this book. I loved how each chapter switched between Sarah and the elevator happenings. I did not have any idea how this story would end and that is a sign of an excellent book!

An exciting beginning but what followed didn’t quite take the story over the mountaintop. It was lacking something for this reader that would have put it over the top.

In the lucrative world of Wall Street finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie and Sam make billion-dollar deals and live in luxury. Getting rich is all that matters, and they'll do anything to get ahead. When they are ordered to participate in a corporate team-building exercise, things start to go horribly wrong. They are made to answer for profiting from a workplace where deception and intimidation thrive.

While I didn’t find the story 100% engaging, I did want to see how the story unfolded. Was this a mystery? It didn’t really feel like it, but there were a few times when my heart beat just a bit faster than normal. But the ending didn’t do anything for me because it didn’t feel complete. While one character’s story is closed, there was another character’s story that was left open in my opinion. I needed an epilogue!

This review doesn’t feel complete, yet I can’t think of another thing to say about this book. I’ll close by saying that this isn’t the best book I’ve read, but it’s not the worst book I’ve read either. Give it a try if Wall Street and a bit of mystery are your thing.

Fun, unique thriller about a group of cut-throat investment bankers whose past leads them to be trapped in an elevator in what they believe to be a team-building escape the room challenge. However, this is no typical escape the room... the clues are personal. I really enjoyed this thriller and trying to figure who trapped these people and why.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

5* “The Escape Room” by Megan Goldin is a far better claustrophobic read than the bestselling “Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty, (which wasn’t even about perfect strangers, but with couples and a family thrown in the mix). In a similar but much more thrilling vein, “The Escape Room” has four New York, Wall Street, finance executives enclosed (stuck) in an elevator, ostensibly for a game called ‘the escape room’ in which they must solve puzzles to be freed. The apparent prize is to find out which is the worthiest. They hypothesise the winner may take up the recently-vacated senior position of Eric Miles and/ or that the loser/s may be retrenched. This is a psychological noir novel, so expect crime and murder.

The story is told varyingly from the first-person viewpoint of the likable Sara Hall and the third-person perspectives of the selfish, vicious executives stuck in the elevator: Vincent, the head, Jules, Sam and Sylvie, the only female of the group. Their back stories emerge as Sara recounts her experiences at cut-throat finance industry leader, Stanhope and Sons. From Sara’s desperation to find a job after the recession has sucked up finance industry jobs, to a disastrous interview with the misogynistic, narcissistic Richard (Richie) Worthington of Stanhope, Sara has a chance encounter with Vincent in a lift, who to her surprised gratitude hires her as an intern. She finds out that Vincent and his crew, except Lucy Marshall – the genius who is ‘on the spectrum’ – are all just as narcissistic and sociopathic as Richie.

This book will resonate with anyone who has ever had a sociopathic boss, and bullying colleagues and boss. The corporate politics are so well described, it is as if Megan Goldin has lived them. The maliciousness is palpable, the back stories well described, the jealousy and greed for money is so real that the font type is almost green. The reader finds out that the executives are on unimaginable salaries and bonuses, running in the mid-to-high six figures to millions. This however, fans the characters’ constant greed to earn even more, to win tenders from clients at the expense of everyman in the USA.

The clues in the elevator at first sound like fun for the reader to try to unravel. It soon becomes apparent that the clues are in-jokes and information only the Stanhope executives would know about. The formula is however, a good one to use, building up suspense.

The author’s depiction of the 4 finance high flyers’ paranoia, claustrophobia, fear of dying of thirst, of the different temperatures, the injuries inflicted, long-bottled anger, loathing combined with lust in the enclosed space of an elevator was visceral. Megan Goldin's writing is spare and to the point. Soon the execs are laid bare of most of their items of designer clothing, the sum of which could buy a small house, and of their sleek façades, to expose their underlying psychopathy and criminality. There are a number of crimes, some white-collar crimes that can earn jail sentences, and then there’s murder.

The outcome at the end of a marathon read till 2 in the morning was so satisfying. The prologue tells the reader it will be morbid, so it is satisfying in the sense of a murder revealed. :)

** Semi Spoiler ** As I read further, I realised that the group of 4 no-hoper, high flyers stuck in the lift had it coming to them. This led me to correctly surmise at the halfway point who might be responsible, notwithstanding a red herring or two. This only enriched the reading pleasure. I was also aware of how they could have gotten out, though they didn’t figure it out.
This review is also on https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2679683237 and https://thereadersvault.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-escape-room-by-megan-goldin.html

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an e-book exchange for my honest opinion.

Excellent engrossing story, that I highly recommend! The plot kept me guessing and very easy to read. Enjoyed!

Chilling, timely, and so twisty you'll feel whalloped, THE ESCAPE ROOM will have you lighting the darkest corners of your home. A wonderful, scary read--highly recommended!