I loved the idea behind this, and finally got really into the book at about 75%.
I am happy I stuck it out.

The originality of it was great. The repetition and all the ins and outs of the job put me off. I found my mind kept wandering and I would have to pick up a different book for a bit.

Do not let the three stars fool you. I really liked this book, for the most part. If I had to describe this book in one word I would have to say it was predicable. If I was given a second word, I would say enjoyable. I started this book on eBook and then listened to it on audio. I enjoy when a book varies the point of view in each chapter. What I loved the most was going from the people in the Escape Room and back to the narrator. It allowed the reader to go more in depth with the characters, and leave little bread crumbs to follow. I really loved it all the way to the final climax.

Then things got a little ridiculous and a bit over the top. I guessed from the very beginning who was behind the plot, and I was right. Sometimes this annoys me but in this case, I felt almost rewarded by guessing correctly.

All in all, the book was average. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with average. If I were to compare this to a movie, I would say this was a Lifetime movie... and I LOVE Lifetime movies.

At the start of this novel, 4 members of a team at an investment bank are summoned to an escape room event in an elevator, which quickly takes a turn for the worse. Alternating with the chapters about their time in the elevator are chapters from the perspective of their former co-worker Sara at an unspecified time in the past. The characters other than Sara do not feel particularly real, the "investment bankers are evil" trope is a bit over the top, and the plot is not totally believable. Yet all that being said, this is a fun and page-turning read, and more importantly, very original which is a rarity for thrillers these days. 3.75 stars.

Sara just graduated from college and is applying and interviewing for jobs with no luck. Her aging parents are declining in health so she chose to study finance in school as it cost less and you can make more money faster. As she is leaving an interview one day she meets Vincent who later brings her back out to New York, she lives in Chicago, to interview with his company. She gets the job and starts working long hours for the company. After she has been there for about six months it is bonus time for the team and she is thrilled to get one herself. Then her friend and co worker commits suicide and then Sara really starts to struggle at work. We go back and forth between Sara and her team who is doing and escape room as an HR required team building exercise years later. But this is no ordinary escape room and things start to go wrong very quickly. I DID NOT see this ending coming at all. My mind just couldn’t figure it all out and the delivery of how it happened was incredible. This is your summer read right here!

Thanks to NetGalley, publisher and author to allow me to get a free copy of this book for review. I wanted to like this book. The premise is very interesting: 4 people trapped in an elevator for a team building exercise. Escape rooms are very common now to experience as a fun and thrilling date with friends, family or partners. I did not like the writing style of this author. So sad! I would definitely try another book from this author, just to see if I have better luck next time.

Escape Room by Megan Goldin is a thriller. I loved the premise of this book-- professionals stuck in an elevator, struggling to live. However, I found it very difficult to read this book. It dragged for me because the characters felt underdeveloped and unlikable, including the narrator. I think this novel was based on a great idea but not well executed. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

I was super excited about this one but it ended up just being "meh" for me. I think the premise was super interesting and definitely triggered my claustrophobia but over all it fell a little flat.

For anyone loves a good revenge story, then this should be the next novel you read. As the blurb states, four Wall Street execs - Vincent, Jules, Sam, and Sylvie - are summoned to a building on a Friday evening for a last-minute meeting, but soon learn that they are doing an Escape Room team-building exercise. Furious about being pulled into this on a Friday evening, they begrudgingly decide to play along due to wanting a promotion and out of fear of rumored layoffs. Although tense from the beginning, things quickly turn dark and angry as secrets come out and the four turn against one another. 

The chapters of The Escape Room alternate between present tense with the four trapped in the elevator and past tense, which tells all about a former employee Sara Marshall, her journey to obtaining a job at the firm, and her life after going to work there. Anyone dreaming of working on Wall Street should read this book. Do you really want those hours and the pressure? Sara has just graduated with her MBA, she's gone into debt to buy an expensive suit, and has a horrible interview for the job of her dreams when she meets Vincent in the elevator. After sneaking a glance at her resume, he asks to take it and says he'll be in touch. This leads up to Sara joining his team along with Jules, Sam, Sylvie, and Lucy. What was originally her dream career is overwhelming with its demands and the life she thought she wanted full of money and power soon begins to take its toll as she opens her eyes as to what is really going on. 

Meanwhile, in the elevator, Vincent and his team slowly begin to freak out as they receive and attempt to solve clues. Each of their personal demons begins to surface whether struggling with addictions, haunted by incidents from their pasts, or secret fears of a financial crisis. Basically, people start getting extremely tense when trapped in an elevator for a team-building exercise with people they truly do not like or respect.

The opening sequence of the novel starts with the end, so to speak, so there are no surprises regarding the outcome of the four trapped in the elevator. The addictive meat of this novel is learning the how and why of it all. It took me very little time to dislike practically every character in this novel. Even secondary characters had traits about them that made me truly despise them and not care if they lived or died. However, they were so greedy, slimy, and flawed that I couldn't help but want to know what would happen next. I will warn you by saying the last 1/3 or so of the novel is a little too unbelievable, however, it sort of made the revenge portion of the story even sweeter. And it was definitely a reminder of the good old rule of treating people as you want to be treated. You never know when someone is going to patiently and painstakingly spend years to enact revenge for something you have done. 

The Escape Room is certainly about lack of morals and greed, but it also serves as a reminder that even if people seem self-assured and confident, there's a very good chance they're battling their own insecurities and struggling with some sort of guilt and regret. Megan Goldin slowly unwrapped these characters like presents, although a present no one would want, and that slow revelation into who they really were and what they were capable of made this a damned good book. Highly recommend this one!

*Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing this review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book started off slow, but then got very interesting! It was very edge of your seat at the end which I loved!

What happens when an escape room situation goes awry? They thought they were in for a game...but what if it's something else?

The premise of this novel is fascinating. We all have our secrets...and we don't always consider how they affect others. What happens when you bring everyone and their secrets together into a cut throat climate? How does that affect what happens?

If you have a passion for revenge thrillers, you'll love this book.

That said, I'll admit when the whole thing unraveled, I was a little bit like "Wait, all of this spiraled out because of THIS one event?" (Not to say it wasn't a terrible thing, but I expected a bit more.)

So if your passion isn't revenge thrillers, you may find this a bit monotonous, and predictable - though likely still enjoyable.

This was a well written psychological thriller ! Taking the place of the current trend of Escape Room games, the author Megan Goldin sets our MC's up in an elevator with the premise that they are playing a game and must escape. Soon they learn that it may be a game of life or death!
I really loved this book and found the twists and surprises to be fresh compared to so many other thrillers out there. Well written and thought out, this is a recommended read for any fan of thrillers or game players.

Escape rooms are supposed to be a fun, yet challenging experience for a group of friends, or even a team building experience for co-workers, right? Not in the elevator at Stanhope. Four of the top investment bankers, Vincent, Jules, Sam, and Sylvie, are called to a mandatory meeting only to be stuck in an elevator. Let's just say, Sara Hall, an ex-employee has other plans. I would call this a light psychological thiller, one where revenge is well planned. Thank you, Netgalley for the opportunity to read this advanced copy. 4 Stars

This book was good and the plot of a survival escape room in an elevator grabbed my attention. That being said, I wished it had a little more of the thriller elements. I was suspecting a lot more twists and turns throughout the book and it seemed all the goods were clumped in the last 25-30%. Overall, I enjoyed the story but will not be adding it to my personal collection.

Books dies in the middle. This book was about 50-100 pages too long. Character development came at odd places and truthfully the story just did not feel at all believable. And the ending made me a bit annoyed that I wasted time reading this. This feels like a book that someone wrote in the hopes that it would become a film.

I rushed through this book in two days! And that’s saying something since I wasn’t able to concentrate on reading anything lately. This book was a thrilling lifeline that helped me get my reading mojo back.

I really don’t want to say much about this book for fear that I’d be spoiling it for you, because this is one book that could easily be read in one sitting. The writing was so addicting and easy to follow that I could hardly stop. The story and the mystery that was at the core of the book was riveting, the characters intriguing. Even if you’re not particularly interested in the cruel world of Wall Street finance, I don’t think you could still resist the electric of this story. I was fully immersed and practically stumbled on words upon words in my trying to reach the end of the book.

One more thing I’d like to point out is the fact that this story takes place around an escape room challenge, and though I never participated in one of those, I heard about them and was very much looking forward to experiencing one for myself. Now though, I’m not so sure. I dare you to read this and think again of any escape rooms!

Highly recommended thriller for any time of the year.

I went into this book pretty much completely blind. All I knew about it was that it was about a group of employees who get stuck in an elevator together. I was expecting a lot of action and plot twists, though.

Unfortunately, this wasn't a good fit for me. This book was too slow-moving and didn't have enough of that "shock value" I was looking for. It took me almost a whole month to even finish it. The characters were not very well developed, and the “twist” was not a twist at all. I could predict it about halfway through.

There was so much corporate talk the entire time that made me bored and disinterested. I really was expecting more from this one, but I didn’t get that. I think it started to get a little more interesting at the 40-60% mark. I wanted to know what was going to happen next, and what the character's secrets were. I do wish that this part of the story had been developed more. That would have bumped up the rating for me. I also just wanted a more satisfying ending, which we didn't get.

This book sucked me in from the beginning and I finished it in 24 hours. I hated the main character and how she morphed in to one of the other financial snobs and it took being at the bottom for her to realize what she had done to herself. Overall it was a quick, enjoyable read that I couldn't put down.

We have four high level members from a prestigious financial company who have worked on the same team for years but remain in competition with each other. They aren't really friends and will do anything to get a better bonus or a promotion even if they have to make their fellow team members look bad. All four are ruthless and cruel. They all received an email to meet in a new building for a mandatory team building exercise and after they got into the elevator, the elevator suddenly stops and these words show up on the panel: "WELCOME TO THE ESCAPE ROOM. YOUR GOAL IS SIMPLE. GET OUT ALIVE.". They aren't really excited about a team building exercise but they know that it's almost time for bonuses so they want to do their best to succeed at the game - after all, it will only be an hour out of their lives. But things don't turn out like they'd all thought that it would and as the hours pass and each person's secrets are revealed, they realize that this is more than a game.

In alternating chapters, we get the story of Sara Hall. She joined the team as a new member years before, eager to work with her new MBA degree in her hand. Her starting salary amazes her but the 90 plus hours a week are difficult to get used to. She tries to work with the team but is always treated as an outsider. The only person that Sara becomes friendly with is Lucy, a very intelligent analyst who is also on the autism spectrum, lacking in social skills and often made fun of by the rest of the team. After a tragedy occurs and Sara begins to question what really happened, she becomes even more ostracized by the rest of the team.

I can't really tell you much more because I don't want to give away any plot points. What I will tell you is that this is an exciting book to read and it kept me up way past bedtime to find out how it would all end and who was responsible for setting up the escape game.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

The Escape Room was an unexpected surprise. Alternating between Sara and her coworkers in “the escape room”, this book had me hooked. I will say that the first part of the book was like a slow simmer but then the second part of the book took the book to a place of no return. I would love to see this as a movie.

I had a love/hate relationship with the characters. I say that in the most endearing way with much love to Megan Goldin.I hated these characters because they were so ruthless but that was the addictive charm to flipping those pages. We learn a lot about her coworkers in that team building exercise that let’s just say they get what’s coming to them with karma served on a gold platter. The drama that unfolded between them was nonstop and you feel like you are in there with them.

I really liked Sara. She represented the good in that awful corporate world. Getting to know her was a nice contrast to the alternate pov of how the book played out. What happened to her was terrible but then a major plat twist happens and it just makes this where you don’t want to stop reading.

Overall, I thought this was an awesome psychological thriller that builds up to be fantastic. I can’t wait to read more from this author and I’m recommending adding this to your TBR.

TWO AND A HALF STARS 🔑
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Happy Spooky Season! It’s officially my favourite time of the year - and prime thriller reading time.
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In The Escape Room, four members of an elite investment banking team enter an escape room as a compulsory corporate activity. They soon realize this room is not full of team building puzzles, but instead challenges their ability to stay alive. The chapters of this book alternated between the escape room, and events that took place months earlier in the office. Unfortunately the pacing of the two storylines was very uneven, and I found myself skipping corporate chapters to continue the escape room storyline.
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The author did a great job of depicting a toxic corporate environment, but the plot wasn’t strong enough for me to recommend this one. ﹒