What a book. When I decided that I wanted to read this book it looked like a great book. The book was on my kindle for a while before I actually started reading and then I wondered why did I choose this book, it just does not look as good as I thought.
The answer soon came to me. This book sucks you in, you want to find out more and more, what makes these people tick, what circumstances brought them together... This book has lots of questions and just as many secrets that are being kept. All of the secrets are revealed in the lift.
What I loved is the past and the present coming together, the characters as well as the story merging from past to present.

This was a brilliant novel and I just enjoyed reading it.

This was an interesting psychological thriller that left me undecided about how I felt about this book. On one hand, the writing was very good and I loved the ending, but the plot was implausible and it dragged in places So 3 1/2 stars.

4 executives arrive on Sunday afternoon and get into an elevator to go up for a team-building exercise. They soon realize the exercise is an escape room, and it's set in the elevator. They start looking for clues, and as they succeed or fail each of them finds out more about the others until some of their deepest secrets are revealed.
It doesn't end up the way they thought it would in the end, can't say anymore because I don't want to give away any spoilers.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ok, I see great potential for this author… The storyline was intriguing, the characters and subject matter pulled you in… While the writing might have been just a smidge too naive, I definitely look forward to more from this author, as she grows into her voice and talents! Thanks for the opportunity to read this!

This book started of slow...four colleagues are invited to do an escape room exercise to build team dynamics...what happens in that elevator is second to the real story..The chapters are a back and forth between Sara Hall and what is going on in the elevator. Many lessons are are shown by the author, in particular that greed will always catch up to you. I certainly look forward to reading more from this author.
Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC.

This one is hard to review because it was a book with huge potential that didn't quite deliver. The premise was original and when the author focused on the people trapped in the "escape room" the story was at its best. They rest of the book never came together for me.

This book had twists I didn’t see coming! It grabbed my attention right from the beginning and held it throughout the entire story. Would definitely recommend!

WOW! This is an intense thriller. It’s about members of an elite business firm. The elevator scene brings so much tension between them. All the lies and wrong doings come flying out from the wood work. You stay on the edge of your seat just to see what’s coming next! Nicely done.

I was excited to read this one based on the description and it didn’t disappoint. Full of twists and suspects I couldn’t wait until the end to find out who was behind the escape room. I will definitely be reading more from this author. Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is a very powwedul debut by Megan Goldin. I'm always interested in escape rooms thrillers and also in escape rooms entertainment.
This thriller takes escape rooms to a different league. Four of the most talented and competitive colleagues of the financial industry are forced to face their darkest secrets when they are trapped together in the escape room. Is it the escape room they need to survive or their own selves?! You have to read this intriguing thriller to find the answer.
I loved loved loved this book. Amazing style and intriguing puzzle.

It seems like I'm one of the few but I did not like this one. I found it very drawn out and unrealistic to the point of being a bit comical. For a thrill, I thought that it had few twists and turns and those that it did have were not the type that made we want to continue to read more. Just not for me.

I saw a review of this book that said it was "utter bananas" and I have to agree. But I also read this entire book in one day, so that's a testament to at least being a very fun kind of bananas.

The book is told through two vectors: Sara, a recent MBA recipient with dreams of joining the top tier of Wall Street, and four prominent investment bankers trapped in an elevator. We follow Sara's slow rise and inevitable fall (just like an elevator - ha!), which aligns with every psychological thriller on the market (if you read a lot of psychological thrillers, you'll know exactly what this means). But then we have the elevator. It's really such a clever idea, revealing the basic outline of the ending for our elevator crew in a weirdly lengthy prologue involving a character who is important for exactly nothing in the grand scheme of things. But the elevator scenes themselves unfold dramatically and believably (at least based on what Sara tells us of these characters). It was such a fun read, compulsory.

My only critiques have to do with logistics. The real reason for the drama comes in very late in the game and very suddenly, making it a little less believable. The perspectives of our elevator characters fluctuate a lot. It doesn't quite feel like omniscience, so every shift from one character's head to another's is a little jarring. I also had some questions about the passage of time; it was unclear just how much time was passing between the events in Sara's vector, and a lot of things felt rushed or sudden but were actually simply years apart, which probably ought to be clarified. When Sara starts talking in terms of years instead of weeks, I was a little bit lost.

All in all, this is a fun ride. There's a really nice balance of psychological thriller with Sara and the tension and fear in the elevator.

"They all had good reason to want one another dead. Here in the elevator, it would be easy."

Four ambitious, successful and overworked investment bankers follow just one more of the relentless orders passed down to them from their superiors, this time requesting that they meet for a last minute team-building exercise. The four, Vincent, Sylvie, Sam, and Jules find themselves trying to decipher codes and solve their way out of a stalled elevator in a vacant construction site. As time passes, tempers flare and secrets come out. And in the end, who, if any will escape?

This was an interesting and enticing thriller, alternating from third person POV to first person, via the voice of Sara Hall, a former co-worker of the four. There are a lot of hints throughout the story as to what's going on, but the details are too complex to figure out entirely, and these made the story an edge-of-your-seat adventure.

As the novel progressed toward the end, and the story unfolded, some of the details were pretty unbelievable, but by that time I was thoroughly caught up in the book to care. I just wanted to know how it was going to end!

Speaking of the end, there were a couple of things that the author didn't tie down firmly, which leads me to believe there's a possibility for a sequel. I'm not sure I would care for that; I really just wanted a more definitive ending to this one. However, I did enjoy the book, and I think it would make an exciting movie.

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

4 stars

This was a debut high on the hype list, and it did not disappoint. This is a thrilling ride from start to finish, so don't make plans once you start reading it, for you'll surely be late.

Wow this one was definitely intense! Maybe a bit too intense for me. I still enjoyed it but could definitely see how it could be too much for some people. Tense from start to finish keeping you breathless and scared this is the one to read if you enjoy scary thrillers that you gotta read in the daylight! I'm not sure I'll ever be able to play an escape game I get too claustrophobic if I feel trapped so this book definitely played to my fears. I got some final destination vibes! All around a good thriller just be prepared!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced eReader copy for my honest review.

Well!! this psychological thriller really was a page turner!. Four co-workers are heading to a scheduled meeting and are taken on an elevator to this meeting. However, things take a turn for the worse when the elevator they are in suddenly stops and they are trapped. They must figure out how to escape by using clues someone is providing them. Can they survive this???

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Thanks NetGalley!

The book is based on the popular theme of escapes rooms. It's being used a team building activity for a bunch of co-workers... as they're all stuffe dinto the elevator to get TO the escape room, they soon realize that this isn't the basic escape room they thought. Theyu're stuck in the elevator and have to use cryptic clues to get out... soon dark secrets come out. Will they survive?

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my copy of The Escape Room by Megan Goldin in exchange for an honest review! The Escape Room is a psychological thriller due for publication on May 28,2019. I'm still not entirely sure how I felt about this book. On one hand, I enjoyed it because it was an easy read and was extremely fast paced. On the other hand, the ending is so utterly unrealistic that I found myself almost laughing out loud at it all. I do appreciate a book that requires little to no thought involved, and that's exactly what this book was. This is a good one to read if you have time to kill and enjoy something fast paced.

The Escape Room. This was an edge of the seat read for me. I could not put this book down. Megan Goldin did such an amazing job writing this title and developing characters and plot. I have already recommended this title to a good friend!

Ughh. I don’t know. This book was incredibly predictable for me but I’m thinking maybe it was supposed to be? The way the story was told and the clues we’re given throughout kind of give everything away. I had it figured out at around 40% completion. I didn’t take this book to be a “mystery” so much as a thriller. It was definitely thrilling. I was curious to see where the story was going and what would become of all the characters. Few of the characters are very likable or have any redeeming qualities. Which was fine actually. I like a good gritty cast of characters because that usually trips me up. But, again, this wasn’t a mystery.

This book is about revenge. It’s about people who are only looking out for themselves and care little about the welfare of others. It’s about secrets so big that they could ruin lives. It’s about getting back at those who have done you wrong. It’s about getting back at those who have done others wrong.

There wasn’t one of those big twists at the end that leave you gaping. It was just one of those endings that left you complacent. It left you to wonder how two particular characters ended up faring in the long run once the novel was at a close. I have some ideas, but…

The other thing that was tripping me up was the way this book was narrated. In the beginning of my notes for this book I assumed the narration would be told by Sara and Sam. I soon learned that every main character in this book gets to narrate their own story. Some accounts are told in first person and some switch to third. So that was a little confusing until I got the hang of how it was written.

I LOVE a good revenge story but I wanted more out of that ending. The book was super exciting, don’t get me wrong. However, if you’re looking for something believable, this book isn’t for you. But it was definitely enjoyable. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy picking this up to read it every day because I did. I just wanted more. This book left me wanting a lot. Which is sometimes a good thing but this time, for me at least, it was a neutral feeling. At the end I just thought to myself, “Well… alright. That’s that.” Nothing stuck with me. Nothing kept me thinking afterwards. Once I was done reading, I was just… done. On to the next.

This is definitely an enjoyable book though and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good thriller. Especially is you like a good revenge thriller. Then this is definitely for you.

I feel like I’ve said a lot of negative things about this book but I want you to know that I really did enjoy reading this! It just didn’t do anything for me. It came to a point where I was just reading to see how my theories came to be true. (Because I was 98% sure I was right in where I thought the story was heading.)

Anyway, I do recommend! Just don’t go into this expecting there to be twists and gasping moments. There really aren’t any. This is just one of those slow burner thrillers where you’re left to wonder why it’s happening. For me, though, I had the what, who, why and how figured out fairly quickly.

Genre: Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Pub. Date: July 30, 2019

A publicist from St. Martin’s Press contacted me to read and review this book, which I find hard to review. The plot is simple and predictable, not to mention implausible. The twist is a cinch to figure out and yet, interestingly, I enjoyed the story. Possibly, this is because most of the story could be straight out of the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” which I, and most moviegoers, thoroughly enjoyed. (If you are too young to know the film, google it).

I would say that the book is more a psychological thriller than a mystery. The novel reveals the cut-throat world of Wall Street corporate finance, where greed and corruption rule. Four hot-shot financial dealers work and live in a world of million-dollar salaries—designer everything. We are talking $11,000 for a pocketbook to be bought in numerous colors. And all four would turn on their grandmother to ensure they keep their million-dollar salaries. Think of the character Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street.” Gekko says to the young new financial advisor, "The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do." And these four have done some horrible things to ensure they have numerous $10,000 wristwatches. I thought the author did overkill in writing about their ridiculous spending habits but she proved her point. These four coworkers, who you will love to hate, are summoned into an elevator in the belief that they are engaging in some sort of team-building exercise. The reader knows from the prologue that bullet shots are heard from the elevator. It is not a team-building experience but a revenge plot against the four.

There are two timelines in the novel told in the first and third person. The four characters trapped in the elevator are told in the third person. The second timeline follows a young woman who graduated at the top of her class with an MBA. She sacrifices food and all her savings to buy an interview suit to look the part for a job in a top-tier finance company. She gets the job and works as the bottom link with the hot-shots. Her narrative is a bit boring. The author clearly wants a good vs. evil theme so, I guess, she is needed to have a moral character in the story. What kept my attention, even when things got a bit tedious, is just how horrible the other four actually are. How far would they go to ensure their hefty bonuses? This one is unquestionably movie material. If you go in knowing the novel’s flaws, you will be able to enjoy the elevator ride.