An interesting "team-building" adventure. This book has you guessing what's coming next through its entirity. The characters were relatable and well-defined. A modern twist to the classic who-done-it style.

So, you arrange for four money-hungry wall streeters to be stuck in an elevator for a few hours, what could go wrong? I really liked the telling of this thriller and I liked the Sara Hall character. Sara Hall is a very smart and nice person who finally gets a break and lands her dream job in New York at a prestigious financial firm. She's never worked so hard in her life and the monetary rewards are great, but, Sara is hardly prepared for the ruthlessness and 'win-at-all-cost' competition and greed she encounters with her success.

I could not put he book down and actually read it through the night. Tense, strong, only for people with strong nerves. Will read more books from this author.

I am a huge fan of Escape Rooms and was super excited to have a chance to read The Escape Room by Megan Goldin!

Four extremely successful investment bankers whose elite jobs are potentially on the line show up on Friday night to what they think is an Escape Room game planned by their company. As they begin to solve clues, but remain trapped in an elevator, tensions rise and old secrets come to light that have potential deadly consequences. Who has summoned them to this "Escape Room" and will they make it out alive?

Chapters alternate between the elevator escape room, and Sarah Hall, a team member who is not present, who details what happened previously that lead to the team being trapped in the elevator.

You may wonder how a whole novel can possibly be set in an elevator, but trust me it can. There is so much going on in that tiny elevator and the rich backstory augments the tiny setting.

This one definitely kept me turning the pages!

Thanks to NetGalley for a Kindle ARC of The Escape Room.

This was a revenge thriller set in the cutthroat world of high finance. Using the recent trend of escape rooms as a plot device, the heroine devises an intricate revenge plot against her former co-workers and boss for the death of a good friend.

When Sarah Hall lands the job of a lifetime in the city, she is elated. She has school loans to pay and two very sick parents to care for.

She is excited, smart, and yes, a bit naive, but then she's from Chicago.

Her co-workers are less than friendly, consumed with making money, more money, and oh, right, MORE money.

Sarah ends up bonding with the least likely person on the team, a brilliant young woman named Lucy, whose social awkwardness is overlooked by her talent with numbers.

When Lucy dies from an apparent suicide, Sarah is naive enough to let it go; the guilt over losing her friend nearly overwhelms her until she speaks to Lucy's mother and she realizes something sinister has been going on under her nose all this time.

As a result, Sarah plots to avenge her friend, but first, she needs to plan.

The plot is nothing new; a bunch of greedy, disgusting, near sociopathic finance analysts whose only priority is to make money and the do-gooder who discovers the truth and seeks to rectify the wrongs that has been done to the innocent.

I enjoy a good revenge story as much as the next person, and this one was satisfying.

Nothing is scarier than being trapped in an elevator, in an enclosed space, with people you hate.

My main caveat is Sarah's sudden acquisition of her James Bond-like abilities; yes, I know she's smart, she got into medical school, but I don't believe she's that 'smart.' Spy smart, street smart, diabolical smart. Nope, not buying that.

But for the sake of this story, I was willing to suspend disbelief, because I wanted the bad guys to get their comeuppance.

Most times, I wanted to shake some sense into Sarah, for her naivete, her wide-eyed innocence, and sheer dumb ass need to trust.

Does she really know nothing about high finance? The blood and tears? The evil machinations people do to dominate, achieve and win?

I guess she doesn't read the news, either.

I enjoyed the scenes in the elevator, the breakdown of each person's mental state, the secrets and revelations revealed, and the timeline jumps into Sarah's past to explain how it all led to the present was handled well enough.

Flashbacks and timeline jumps are not easy to write seamlessly or incorporate into the present narrative.

Overall, a decent thriller with unlikeable characters.

Read this if you hate corporate, money grubbers; the ending is predictable but satisfying.

This book was extremely entertaining. Twisty and turny. Filled with deception and lies. The ending was...wow.

All in all I enjoyed it immensely. Is it believable? Not so much, but isn’t that why we read?

This book was great. I enjoyed it. It was intense, and I couldn’t put it down. It makes me think twice about doing an escape room in real life!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own

This was a pleasant surprise. It was a fun, engaging read and it kept me wanting to turn pages (actually to keep swiping pages on my Kindle, but it's just semantics)

A group of Wall Street high roll investment bankers are summoned on a Friday evening for what they believe is a team-building exercise or activity. Considering that there are rumors about possible layovers, they don't dare to question anything and promptly show up at specified location. As they are ascending to where they think the meeting will take place, their elevator just stops and they quickly realize that they are now in "escape room" scenario. Whoever is behind this "exercise" starts giving them clue and it becomes obvious that this person or persons know a whole lot about them and their work in the company. Now, their alliances are tested, who can they trust, who is setting them up, are they ever going to be saved?? And most importantly, who is behind their nightmare?

The Escape Room by Melissa Goldin was a fast-paced and intriguing thriller. In the high stakes world of investment banking, four coworkers are summoned to an elevator escape room. They're familiar with the team builder, and they assume this one will be a similar endeavor. They quickly realize that will definitely not be the case. The story is told through alternating timelines. First, there is looking back at Sara Hall's experience at the company. Sara was a recent graduate who was sucked into the cutthroat and complex world of finance. She couldn't believe she got the job, and she begins to navigate the high stakes world finding it quite full of all the stress and sacrifice to get ahead. Then, there is the escape room experience. In the elevator, "clues" are revealed, as our long-kept secrets (and lies) between the quartet. With each passing minute and clue, the escape room elevator becomes a more concerning and complicated situation. This one was intense in the best of ways. The scandalous twists and turns of this one kept me reading. This one will be on shelves in August, and a thanks to NetGalley for the super early preview. I really dug how this book used an escape room as a plot device, and the reveal at the end was just so wonderfully sensational. It was everything I love in a good thriller.

In this book, a group of employees are told to meet for a team building exercise at an escape room. They are locked in an elevator and given a few clues but nothing seems to add up. An hour passes. And then another. They become suspicious of the situation and of each other.

I thought I had the ending all worked out, and then it turned on me 😂 It’s a good thriller and I’d give this one a 4/5!

The Escape Room will be out on August 6, 2019. Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
#bookreview #currentlyreading #theescaperoom #megangoldin #stmartinspress #bookshark

Ok, I went into this book not really knowing what to expect, and ended feeling pleased with the whole story. Definitely different than my usual reads, I would categorize it as somewhere between psychological thriller and horror novel, although not sure even that accurately describes it.
Sort of like a team building exercise gone wrong, The Escape Room follows four people in an elevator, who are given “clues” to to escape. But that is where normalcy ends.
To say more would give it away. I enjoyed the unexpectedness of The Escape Room, and read it pretty quickly to see how it would end. May make for a good book club read for a more exciting storyline than usual.

Thrilling concept of revenge, destruction. I found that I didn't like any of the characters but was nevertheless fascinated and couldn't put this book down til the end.

This is the first time I have read anything by Megan Goldin and I have to say that I was quiet surprised at this one. I didn't really know what to expect but this one was a good read. It was easy reading and easy to follow along with which made it even more enjoyable. You won't want to put it down once you get started though so just be prepared for that!

Megan Goldin wrote this one to where it is alternating between Sara Hall and the elevator. Sara is a young lady that has just graduated with her MBA and is in pursuit of a good job right out of college. After an interview gone horribly wrong, Sara has an encounter with Vincent in the elevator and he asks for her resume. He never promises anything but does tell her that if her has any jobs open up, he will give her a call. The elevator scene is Vincent, Jules, Sylvie and Sam all trapped in an elevator and they think that they have been called to an important meeting that has turned into an Escape Room team building exercise.

Sara eventually lands a job with Stanhope and Sons, one of the big financial investor companies. Sara is required to work all the time and expected to never make mistakes. They have to look spotless as well, but that is hard when you work extra long hours and get little sleep. Sara doesn't make friends too quick, but she has resolved to do her job and whatever else she can manage to fit into her very little free time that she has. Sara is helping pay the medical insurance for her parents because they can't afford it anymore so she knows that she has to keep this job now that she has landed it. Sara just had no idea how crazy things were going to get for her.

There are lots of twists and turns that I did not see coming in this one and I for sure never could have guessed the ending! I highly recommend this one if you like a book that will keep you turning the pages and unable to put it down. I will be looking forward to more from Megan Goldin for sure!

I voluntarily read and reviewed this book. All opinions are my own. Thanks for Netgalley, the publisher and the author for an advanced copy of this book!

Wow! I practically inhaled this book and read it in one sitting. Fabulous premise and totally engrossing tale of revenge and destruction. Megan Golden has created a world and characters of intense dynamics which leave the reader breathless at the fantastic conclusion.

This book will be a hit with the psychological thriller / new adult crowd! I was hooked quickly and abandoned all the other books I was reading to power through this one.

The twists are good, but what I liked most about the book was the psychological character study. There are elements of social experiment, transformation, and the effects of trauma on personality.

I liked the concept, but the execution of this novel played out more as a revenge fantasy than a mystery or thriller. Perhaps it's just not for me.

"The Escape Room" is a psychological thriller, full of characters you won't like but are still curious to know what will happen to them. Told in alternating times, the book goes back and forth between Sara Hall and her journey to and time working for Stanhope, a prestigious corporate finance/investment banking firm, and the current team doing the escape room. Vincent heads up a team, which Sara had joined just after getting her MBA, and which includes Sam, Jules, and Lucy.

Vincent, Sam, Jules, and Lucy are sent an email that informs them to report to a building for a compulsory meeting. Vincent informs them it's an escape room challenge. However, when the elevator stops, they find themselves trapped in a small, hot space with random clues. As they solve them, secrets come out and lies are exposed. In this small space full of cutthroat individuals, survival is not guaranteed.

On the other side, Sara was idealistic when she joined Stanhope and was quickly indoctrinated into the selfish and materialistic culture. Working constantly, the company takes precedence over everything- weddings, births, deaths, etc. However, the pay is phenomenal. How each person on the team has coped with it is told through small sections, giving the beginning parts of the book a character study feel. As the plot moves forward, we begin to question not only how they ended up in the elevator but the events leading up to it and the deaths in the past and potentially in the present.

While I found it fairly easy to figure out who was behind it, the journey was fascinating. It isn't often I can dislike all the characters and still want to know what will happen. This book kept me engaged and reading all the way to the end. As a warning, there is sexual assault, workplace sexual harassment, drug use, affairs, prostitution, domestic abuse, and murder within the pages. This was a different and interesting book with a unique premise. I think fans of psychological thrillers will enjoy it!

Please note that I received an ARC from the publisher through netgalley. All opinions are my own.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy of this book. I enjoyed it from page one. The fast paced setting kept me on my toes. I loved how the POV changed between the present and the past and we could learn more about each character and how they worked together. What we see as a typical escape room challenge to build team morale turns into so much more. Drama, suspense, and a thrilling ending- this book kept me way up past my bedtime on several nights. I couldn’t wait to finish it.

Wow! What a fantastic read. Twisted and satisfying. Even though you know from the beginning who is behind everything, the book makes you want to read it just to figure out the why and how. Does not disappoint!

Provocative and Highly Entertaining! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟's!

The head of his department, Vincent recievs a text with instructions to assemble his team and bring them to the eightieth floor of highrise in the South Bronx. All the team members are told that there is a mandatory last minute meeting. one that would be highly prudent to attend. Once everyone is in the lobby, Vincent reveals that they are to participate in a team building challenge of which the results will be used for 'internal consultations about future staff planning'. As there are eminent layoffs in the near future they catch the meaning immediately. The challenge is to be locked in a room known as The Escape Room, where there will be a series of puzzles to solve, which if done correctly, will unlock the door. They are lead to believe that the excercise will take an hour of their time and then they will be free to carry on with their plans for the weekend. 
When they step into the elevator to go up to the eithtieth floor, all seems fine... Until the lights go out and there seems to be no way to stop it on any floors. When they arrive at the seventieth floor the elevator slows and comes to a stop but the doors remain closed no matter what they try, including the emergency button to which there is no response. The panal above the doors that displays the floor numbers shows an E. Error
Then, on the television monitor above the control panel, a message appears. 
WELCOME TO THE ESCAPE ROOM. YOUR GOAL IS SIMPLE. GET OUT ALIVE.

********
the Escape Room by Megan Goldin is unique, entertaining, and provocative!
Megan Goldin creates the perfect odious and repulsive characters in eam members, Sam, Sylvie, Juels, and Vincent, representing the kinds of people who live in the financial world of Wall Street.
The book crackles with a continuous sense of distrust and the toxic environment of the where the end game is money, power, and greed shines through in spades!
There's an ever-present, tantalizing sense of anticipation that continues to build as we watch the events unfold in the tight confines of the elevator, all the while I was hoping that they get what they have coming to them in one way or another.
And do these four unsavory characters get what they deserve? All I will say is that the wait was worth reading every word to find out, even if it wasn't what I was expecting!

"Megan Goldin is the bestselling author of "The Escape Room", praised by Lee Child as "one of my favorite books of the year", as well as "The Girl In Kellers Way", a critically-acclaimed domestic noir thriller nominated for Australia's leading crime fiction awards."

I have the paperback edition of "The Girl In Kellers Way" on my shelves and now I'm wondering why I haven't read it yet! You can be certain that I will be reading it in the very near future!

**With thanks to Jordan Hanely, Marketing Manager at St. Martin’s Press, Megan Goldin,  and NetGalley for providing me with this advanced uncorrected digital copy to read and review.