The Escape Room by Megan Goldin – 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blurb

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

In the lucrative world of Wall Street finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie and Sam are the ultimate high-flyers. Ruthlessly ambitious, they make billion-dollar deals and live lives of outrageous luxury. Getting rich is all that matters, and they’ll do anything to get ahead.

When the four of them become trapped in an elevator escape room, things start to go horribly wrong. They have to put aside their fierce office rivalries and work together to solve the clues that will release them. But in the confines of the elevator the dark secrets of their team are laid bare. They are made to answer for profiting from a workplace where deception, intimidation and sexual harassment thrive.

Tempers fray and the escape room’s clues turn more and more ominous, leaving the four of them dangling on the precipice of disaster. If they want to survive, they’ll have to solve one more final puzzle: which one of them is a killer?

My Review

When a book opens with a quote from Sun Tzu “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” it really sets the scene for what is to come.

Alternating chapters from “the lift four” and new junior executive Sara Hall we learn of Stanhope & Sons , the cut throat finance industry of Wall Street, ruthless ambition, greed and envy.

How companies use greed and ambition with the promise of a luxury lifestyle to brainwash employees into losing their moral compass.

Sara and fellow colleague Lucy (branded a misfit) are social outcasts who don’t quite fit in with the others but are useful enough for them to keep around. I loved both of these characters, Sara for her underdog tenacity and Lucy for her quiet but extraordinary intelligence.

I’m not going to go into the plot as this is a book you really don’t want to accidentally spoil.

This book is a masterclass on the claustrophobic thriller.

About the author

Megan Goldin worked as a foreign correspondent for the ABC and Reuters in Asia and the Middle East, where she covered war zones and wrote about war, peace and international terrorism. After she had her third child, she returned to her hometown of Melbourne to raise her three sons and write fiction. She is the author of the acclaimed debut novel THE GIRL IN KELLERS WAY. THE ESCAPE ROOM is her second novel. You can see more about her and her work at http://www.megangoldin.com

Link to buy

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Escape-Room-favourite-books-CHILD-ebook/dp/B07NLCJMK3