Sunday, July 7, 2019

The Escape Room Review


Title:  The Escape Room
Author:  Megan Goldin
Genre:  Suspense/Thriller
Publisher:  St. Martin's Press
Release Date:  July 30, 2019
Purchase Link:  Amazon

My Rating: 4.5 Compulsive Hearts


*With many thanks to St. Martin's Press for an arc of this book via Netgalley

In Megan Goldin's unforgettable debut, The Escape Room, four young Wall Street rising stars discover the price of ambition when an escape room challenge turns into a lethal game of revenge.

Synopsis:
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 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?

Review:
A highly addictive, compelling must read! I was held spellbound by this mesmerizing story - only managing to escape its hold by finishing the book.  Readers, you'll want to set aside enough time to read this in one sitting as I did.  Once you enter, there's no going back!  

The Escape Room is a gripping story of greed, corruption, and revenge - just another day in the cut throat, ruthless Wall Street corporate world.  Three shallow, high finance team members and their team leader receive a non-negotiable invitation to attend an Escape Room team building exercise late on Friday afternoon.  There isn't an option to decline if they want to keep their jobs.  The location is a high-rise building under construction which stands empty on the weekend except for a security guard.  The team enters the elevator unseen to ascend to the destined escape room - only to find themselves locked in the elevator around the 70th floor.  Lights go out and the temperature rises as they work to solve a few cryptic clues to get released.  As time passes, the heat becomes suffocating, tempers flare, dark secrets and resentments surface, chaos and panic set in, and the situation becomes volatile, escalating out of control.  It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary escape room challenge . . . they're in a battle for their lives. 

I'm not going to say more about the story.  It's truly an enthralling experience to read and discover the role each person plays in this deadly game and how they ended up there.  Goldin delivers the unique story through chapters that alternate between the present escape room elevator scene and the past leading up to that point in time narrated by a former employee.  Jumping back and forth between scenes, my heart rate escalated as I flew through the pages and soon found myself trapped in the escape room right along beside them.  You can literally smell the sweat and fear and count the heartbeats!  The author slowly weaves each individual's personal story until they all come together in a climax that may not be shocking, but is well delivered and deserved.  The Escape Room is one of the most compulsive reads I've experienced in a long time.  Not the most twisted, not the most shocking, but the most can't-put-it-down, I'm-fully-immersed Must Read!  Highly recommended!

My Rating:  4.5 Compulsive Hearts . . . And that's the truth!

Cross My Heart . . . xxx
Sandra














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