Reviews

The Escape Room by Megan Goldin

Only show reviews with written explanations

jensmalle's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

dianawohl's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.5

shermanberry's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

The premise of this thriller was great. Four overpaid and largely unlikable investment bankers stuck in a lift after being bought there supposedly by management for a team building exercise. They start off thinking they are in an Escape Room and the narrative alternates between the action in the lift and the back story that led us there. So far so good but a few things jarred a little bit for me.

Spoilers imminent!!!

I love a revenge story that culminates in some wrong being put right. For me it is far more satisfying if the perpetrators of the original wrong not only get their payback but they find out who is responsible for the payback. We never got that closure here.

It was a bit of a stretch to think that the four people in the lift just cruised in to a lift that was in the lobby of an unfinished office block. Surely a building site would be locked after hours. Even if open would otherwise intelligent people just happily wander in?

The character of Vincent changed too much. One minute he was benevolent mentor taking Sara into the firm. The next he was engineering her dismissal following an accusation made against one of the team members. This suggested he was complicit in Lucy's death but later in the story he seemed to be unaware of what had happened.

Sara's dismissal was necessary to generate the sense of injustice that she was victim of. I just felt that it all seemed a bit contrived then the text raced ahead too quickly I thought.

On a side note I really wanted Sara to take revenge on Kevin too. What a creep.

Enjoyable? Yes
Brilliant? No

jaimie_lynn's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

2.5⭐

So this author considered an Escape Room to be an elevator with 2 puzzles in it.

sweetchoas's review against another edition

Go to review page

medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

honestly feels like such a surface level wattpad story / rtl9 movie

mindlessly entertaining but not worth it if you're looking for something else

- NO thrills whatsoever. like there are no stakes, i was NOT interested in whether those assholes would survive, nor in how the vengence came about

- everything was so predictable honestly

- very one dimensional character, extremely mean-spirited or extremely clueless, no nuance

- how could vincent act angry after discovering what happened to lucy, and bitch about not behind told earlier, WHEN HE LITERALLY DISMISSED MC WHEN SHE TRIED TALKING ABOUT IT ???? Actually wtf was happening towards her last months at work, why did he change so much if it wasn't about her "finding out about lucy"???? why did he just not stop for a second and listen to her ????? that makes just no sense, no human behaves like this

- the way lucy was written also pissed me off, sure she's on the spectrum but goddamn it makes no sense for her to seek help from the people who openly DESPISED her for years like what ???? if she's as smart and logical as they portrayed her, then how come she couldn't expect them to not care ????

- sara also pissed me off, not in a flawed character way but in a badly written one. you got an mba & 3yoe in a TOP firm, but can't get a fucking corporate job ???? i would get not being able to land a job in another high finance role but god fucking damn there's so much more than investment banking ???? it just seemed so tone deaf and stupid honestly

- also, miss author is part of the stephen king's club of going off trails like why are we talking about 10 things at the same time. do we have to have flashbacks every 5 minutes?? flashbacks IN flashbacks??? it was so exhausting. it happened a lot less towards to last third of the book but i really had to grit my teeth for the first parts

all in all, not a great book. boring plot, nothing out of the ordinary, not that made my heart beat. just a regular rtl9 afternoon movie but as a book

elleyotter's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

Rating: 3 to 3.5 stars
Would have rated higher but there are some really problematic elements, not least of which are some of the terminology and descriptive choices used, which maybe Australia has different rules for? Or maybe 2019 is longer ago than I think it is and what's considered acceptable has changed drastically in the last 5 years? Idk.

TW/CWs:
Fatphobia abounds; so much misogony; sexual assault; gaslighting; all sorts of awful remarks about a character on the Autism spectrum; Asperger's is no longer a diagnosis; mentions of OCD for a character on the AS who likes order (which is a personal pet peeve of mine at this point); although Gypsy is sometimes used as a neutral or positive self-descriptor, it is recommended that those for whom it is not a self-descriptor use Roma or Romani/Romany instead, so let's just not please; drugs; murder; suicide; cheating.