Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Release Date: July 30, 2019
352 Pages
Synopsis: Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are ruthlessly ambitious high flyers working in the lucrative world of Wall Street finance where deception and intimidation thrive. Getting rich is all that matters, and they’ll do anything to reach the top.
When they are ordered to participate in a corporate team-building exercise that requires them to escape from a locked elevator, dark secrets of their team begin to be laid bare.
The biggest mystery to solve in this lethal game: What happened to Sarah Hall? Once a young shining star—now “gone but not forgotten”.
This is no longer a game.
They’re fighting for their lives.
The Escape Room doesn’t score high on the believability scale, but it’s so much fun that most readers won’t care. I know so-called Escape Rooms where groups of people have to work together in order to get out have become very popular, but I find just thinking about them to be claustrophobic. Imagine then an escape room turning out to be a locked elevator. Cue anxiety! Then add in co-workers who already aren’t the nicest people. Put them in a situation like this and it makes Survivor look like a relaxing vacation retreat.
The story is told in multiple povs, but rather then slowing the plot down, it made it that much more interesting. Trapped in the stifling elevator on the 70th floor over the course of several days, you get to know these four pretty well as they attempt to escape and to find out who is behind their imprisonment and why. The characters except for Sarah, are pretty vile, but they’re the type that you love to hate. The ending is satisfying and wraps everything up which I appreciated.
To sum things up, The Escape Room won’t win any prestigious literary awards, but it’s a thoroughly entertaining page-turner that is perfect for this time of year, and it’s one I highly recommend!
