*I received an arc of the audiobook from NetGalley*

Outline:

This book follows Joe, a man in his 40’s, who is walking around the world after the death of his wife. In Barcelona, he meets Helen at the hostel he is staying at. Together, they decide to take part in a haunted house competition in the Gothic quarter. All they have to do is complete the challenges set for them in 9 rooms. Easy?
Far from it.
Neither of them could predict the mind-altering nature of the No-End house.

My review:
The characters of Joe and Helen started out as believable and well rounded, but the same could not be said for the rest. A certain little person’s portrayal (I will not use their name for spoilers) specifically felt rather offensive and unnecessary. Besides the main two, no one had any depth.
The plot began pretty intriguing, if you ignored the big flaws. Neither Joe nor Helen really needed the prize money, and it was an incredibly small amount, even before they knew the danger they would face.
The ending annoyed me. I won’t say what it was, but it was unclear and I found myself not caring what was or wasn’t true.
Given that the book began with vibes similar to the film ‘Hostel’, the fairytale elements actively annoyed me. It was around the 50% mark that this book lost me. I completed it anyway but it was a slog

For the audiobook version, I found the narrator to be a believable voice for the character, and his overall performance to be of a high quality.

As a whole, the writing was immersive with some visceral descriptions that left me feeling as uncomfortable as the characters, but this was overshadowed by the sub-par plot.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for providing a free audio arc in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately this is a DNF for me at 48% in. The premise of this book sounded really interesting and started off good with getting into the competition for the escape room really gearing up like it was going to be like a slasher horror. What this ended up being was a bad acid trip (or mushroom trip). Insectoid like monsters, traveling back in time, just a hodgepodge of things that were thrown in there that really took me out of the story. If the author would have stuck to a more escape room story with people hunting the characters down and delving more into their stories it would have kept my interest, but this was just a little too out there for me.