#BlogTour-‘The Escape Room’ by Megan Goldin

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

In the lucrative world of Wall Street finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie and Sam are the ultimate high-flyers. Ruthlessly ambitious, they make billion-dollar deals and live lives of outrageous luxury. Getting rich is all that matters, and they’ll do anything to get ahead.

When the four of them become trapped in an elevator escape room, things start to go horribly wrong. They have to put aside their fierce office rivalries and work together to solve the clues that will release them. But in the confines of the elevator the dark secrets of their team are laid bare. They are made to answer for profiting from a workplace where deception, intimidation and sexual harassment thrive.

Tempers fray and the escape room’s clues turn more and more ominous, leaving the four of them dangling on the precipice of disaster.

If they want to survive, they’ll have to solve one more final puzzle: which one of them is a killer?

Praise for The Escape Room:

“High wire tension from the first moment to the last. Four ruthless people locked in a deadly game where victory means survival. Gripping and unforgettable!” Harlan Coben

“Fantastic. One of my favourite books of the year.” Lee Child

“Amazing…a thriller set in an elevator [that explores] the vast territory of people’s worst natures. A nightmarish look inside ourselves. Simply riveting.” Louise Penny

“A sharp, slick, utterly engrossing thriller. This knockout debut hooked me from the first page and didn’t let go.” Cristina Alger, USA Today bestselling author of The Banker’s Wife

Because I am a complete idiot, I signed up to do this blogtour when the US publishers, St MArtin’s Press asked if I wanted to host an extract, and then again because I was reading it, for UK publishers Trapeze.

Due to a busy period where we have been struggling to manage the work/life balance thing(current update=drowning!) I totally forgot about the UK one.

Hugest of apologies to the author, Trapeze Publishing and Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for this oversight, here is my review-

‘The Escape Room’ is a psychological thriller which has depth and nuance as it examines the culture of toxic masculinity as well as the lengths some women will go to to play with ‘the big boys’.

Written in alternating chapters between a first person narrative (Sara Hall) and third person for the people trapped in the escape room (an elevator)this is a taut story of privilege, abuse of power and retribution.

Led by greed, 3 men and 1 woman from the same firm,Stanhope and Son, are invited to essentially what is a building site.

They know they are going to an escape room situation, that much was clear from the invite, however, what they, and the reader, do not know, is that the escape room is actually the elevator itself…

It’s late on a Friday, no one is expected to notice that they are missing until Monday at the latest. Can they work together and survive this test, and in doing so, work out why they are being punished?

As the story interweaves with Sara’s, a graduate who is living in poverty, eeking out an existence as a waitress begins her entry into what is a very exclusive working environment, the damaging nature of neoptism, power and financial gain is swiftly exposed.

There is nothing that these people will not do to protect themselves and their position at this firm, nothing at all.

Which means there are absolutely going to be casualties…

You are constantly kept on your toes as the trapped people struggle to work out the ingeniously hidden clues-the chapters which focus on the elevator are so claustrophobic that you eagerly want to skip to Sara’s story for some ‘air’.

The way that Sara quickly realises that she is in a gilded cage and that the mainpulation of facts, figures and rationale takes precedence over being, basically, a decent human being, is chilling.Businesses obviously have to make money to stay afloat but there are ethical ways of doing it.At Stanhope however, you do things their way or the consequences could be deadly…

I would thoroughly recommend this book for a great weekend read, it’s one you will find hard to put down for sure.

Warning-this might not be a good book if you are claustrophobic and contains brief descriptions of sexual assault which are part of the story but not gratuitous at at all.