Sara Hall is nervous. Her interview at Stanhope didn’t go as well as she’d hoped, and the elevator ride back down to reality is harsh. Her MBA isn’t enough to get her in the door of a top investment banking firm like she was hoping. The school loans are huge. Her parents are not well, and their medical bills are mounting. And she’s so exhausted from waiting tables that she can hardly stand up. And then she meets Vincent.
She only met him briefly at Stanhope, but that was enough for him to see something in her. He asked her to come back and interview for his team. She passed the series of interviews and came to work a six-figure salaried job for Vincent. The pay was good and the perks were amazing, but it was a seven-day-a-week job. Long hours, always on call. Sara was okay with that. She was willing to put in the long hours. She was willing to get coffee for the team. This was her dream.
And then it all started to fall apart for her. Vincent, the incandescent leader of the team, was away more and more. Sam, Vincent’s second-in-command and Sara’s unofficial mentor, started to point out her mistakes and said he couldn’t protect her anymore. Jules and Sylvie never really cared for her, so they didn’t care if she sank or swam, as long as she didn’t take the team down with her. And then there was Lucy. Lucy was brilliant, but on the autism spectrum, so she didn’t really fit in with the team. But her ideas were so lucrative that Vincent protected her. But when she took her own life, Sara knew that there was something deeply wrong with Vincent and his team. Before she could do anything about it, though, she was killed, leaving only the four original teammates.
As Bonus Day got closer, they all wanted to know what they could do to maximize their payouts for the year. So when the text came through about their taking part in an escape room, they went. Despite missing out on personal obligations, they chose to enter the escape room for one more team-building exercise before they found out just how big their bonuses would be. But then something went wrong. And then everything went wrong. And then they were stuck together, wondering if maybe the escape room wasn’t they thought it was.
And they start to wonder if they’ll even get out alive.
Megan Goldin’s debut novel The Escape Room is as fascinating a thriller as I’ve read in a long time. I am not a binge reader. And yet, I could not pull myself away from this novel. I had to know how all the pieces came together. And it was amazing. I fell for this book hard!
If you love a good thriller, if you want to be grabbed and held tightly by a story, if you’re fascinated by the cutthroat world of investment finance, then you should definitely not let this one pass you by! Lock yourself into your own escape room and read this as soon as you can!
Galleys for The Escape Room were provided by St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.