Title: The Escape Room
Author: Megan Goldin
Publication Date: July 30, 2019
Pages: 352
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Date Started: November 26, 2018
Date Finished: November 30, 2018
Format: Kindle

 

---

I am so excited to be apart of the blog tour for The Escape Room by Megan Goldin. I feel that blog tours always bring not only myself, but also everyone else closer to the book and the author. The Escape Room was officially released just days ago, so I am happy to share a Q&A from Goldin, along with my thoughts on the book.

Official Synopsis:

In Megan Goldin’s unforgettable debut, The Escape Room, four young Wall Street rising stars discover the price of ambition when an escape room challenge turns into a lethal game of revenge.

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

In the lucrative world of finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are at the top of their game. They’ve mastered the art of the deal and celebrate their success in style—but a life of extreme luxury always comes at a cost.

Invited to participate in an escape room as a team-building exercise, the ferociously competitive co-workers crowd into the elevator of a high rise building, eager to prove themselves. But when the lights go off and the doors stay shut, it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary competition: they’re caught in a dangerous game of survival.

Trapped in the dark, the colleagues must put aside their bitter rivalries and work together to solve cryptic clues to break free. But as the game begins to reveal the team’s darkest secrets, they realize there’s a price to be paid for the terrible deeds they committed in their ruthless climb up the corporate ladder. As tempers fray, and the clues turn deadly, they must solve one final chilling puzzle: which one of them will kill in order to survive?

Author Bio:

MEGAN GOLDIN worked as a correspondent for Reuters and other media outlets where she covered war, peace, international terrorism and financial meltdowns in the Middle East and Asia. She is now based in Melbourne, Australia where she raises three sons and is a foster mum to Labrador puppies learning to be guide dogs. THE ESCAPE ROOM is her debut novel.

Buy-book link:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250219671

Goldin Q&A

1. How did you become inspired to write The Escape Room?

There were a number of inspirations that led to me writing The Escape Room. First of all, I’d had my third baby and, for the first time since my working life began, I’d taken a year or so out of the workforce to be with him. When I started looking to go back to work, I interviewed for a job for which I should have been a serious candidate as my experience closely matched the job description and I’d done something similar before for a similar company. Instead, the interviewer ate snack food throughout the interview with, let’s just say, very bad table manners. He crunched particularly loudly every time that I spoke. I drew on this experience when I wrote about the job interview from hell that Sara Hall went through in The Escape Room. It made me feel powerless. I told friends about what happened and they shared with me their own horror stories in the workplace. It made me want to explore sexism in the workplace in my next novel. It also inspired the idea of a revenge theme. I liked the idea of someone who is beaten down by the system making a comeback.

Around that time I was also stuck in an elevator. I’d gone shopping with my kids. I had a cart full of food. The elevator stopped and the lights went off. It took a couple of minutes until we were able to get out but it was a dark, cold, and frightening couple of minutes in that elevator. I’d been thinking about a setting for this thriller revenge story that I had in mind. It struck me that the elevator was a perfect setting. I was fired up by the challenge of setting a novel in an elevator. It also served my purpose well. I wanted to put my characters in a pressure-cooker atmosphere where animosity would build as they learned each other’s secrets. An elevator was perfect.

2. What was your research process like when writing about the financial industry in the U.S?

When I research my books, I apply journalism skills acquired over the years. That means immersing myself in whatever information I can get ahold of. I read books, newspaper articles, elevator manuals, and even journal studies on human psychology. I also followed forums for investment bankers and others working in the financial industry and some of their social media feeds. I spoke with people who worked in the world of finance and also drew on material that I’d collected in the past. For example, there were big name investment banks in my previous office building and I’d often overhear bankers and brokers chatting in the elevator about their personal lives and work, or in my condominium building where many of them lived. I tend to write and research at the same time as I don’t plan my novels other than the story arc. As the story evolves on the pages while I write, I’ll stop writing for a few hours and branch out to research whatever might be relevant for the novel. In the case of The Escape Room, that included issues such as ‘game theory’ and things as mundane as technical manuals about elevator safety mechanisms and issues related to guns and ballistics. The research is one of the fun parts of writing a novel. I get to learn new things and it breaks up the intensity of writing. 

3. Are there any authors that you most look up to?

There is an endless list of authors, from crime and thriller writers, to literary fiction, classics, and non-fiction. Now that I am writing myself, I tend to analyze other books as I read. I look at plot, structure, character, voice, and various other writing techniques. Even as a journalist, I always saw writing as a constant process of learning and refining. I think it’s a lifelong endeavor. Among my favorites is John le Carre. I consider his novels master classes in suspense writing and I often reread them. Yuval Noah Harari’s series, starting with Sapiens, was another inspiration behind The Escape Room, as I’d been reading it and watching Yarari’s lectures on Youtube. It made me look at office culture through a prism of evolutionary biology. Offices are a modern-day human habit and the backbiting office politics is really a case of survival of the fittest.

4. If The Escape Room was to become a movie, which actor or actress would you like to play some of the roles?

Well, a close friend just suggested Bradley Cooper for Vincent! Or perhaps Colin Farrell, Ryan Gosling or Jesse Eisenberg for Sam and Jules. As for actresses, maybe Jennifer Lawrence for Sylvie, or Anne Hathaway or Margot Robbie for Sara Hall. Lucy could be Emily Blunt. 

5. Do you have any upcoming projects you’re working on?

I am working on my next book. It’s also a thriller and it addresses contemporary themes but it’s quite different from The Escape Room. I’m a little hesitant about how much to divulge at this point until it’s done.

6. Anything else you’d like to add? 

I’m extremely touched by all the support and feedback that I’ve been getting from so many bloggers and reviewers who are passionate about The Escape Room and who love the characters. Thank you all so much.

My Review

*I would like to thank the publisher, author, and NetGalley for providing an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

Four investment bankers walk into an elevator… This could be the start to a really corny joke but instead is the beginning of a gripping, engaging, stay-up-all-night suspense thriller from Megan Goldin. The bankers are told that the elevator meeting is an escape room exercise, and their jobs may be on the line. However, once the activity gets started, they realize more than their jobs may be on the line. In fact, their very lives may be in jeopardy, and everyone has a secret.

This book is told along two separate timelines, one from the individuals trapped in the elevator, and one from a former colleague of theirs. I found this setup heightened the experience of the novel, because it left the reader with no idea as to what happened in the past or why the individuals were actually being tortured in the elevator.

I personally loved the voice that Goldin brought to this novel. Her writing kept me intrigued with this book and propelled me through the pages in record time. The puzzles in the escape room were also refreshing. The ones that didn’t require background knowledge of the characters were fun to figure out before the participants could. In fact, I wish there had been more, I had my notepad out ready to decipher codes (have I mentioned I love escape rooms?).

I found myself wanting a little more from the ending and the resolution of the mystery, but I feel like the build-up made up for it. I suppose I wanted a more shocking conclusion, it all happened so suddenly. Regardless, I recommend this book as it was a wild ride from start to finish and I look forward to seeing what future works come from Goldin.

Overall, 3.5/5 moose