Synopsis:

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?

This was the ultimate pick to get me out of the book slump I’ve been experiencing – it’s hard to believe that this is the author’s debut work. Her writing style is exceptionally easy to read and her ability to hold my interest was impressive especially given that I’ve struggled to sit down and read anything in a couple of months.

The chapters alternate between the four characters who have been trapped in a lift in the present, and the past from the perspective of one of their colleagues which gradually reveals why exactly they’ve been trapped. This has been done so perfectly that I was annoyed whenever either perspective ended because I wanted more of both!
The build up of suspense is amazing, making the reader feel more and more tense as the story goes on and you begin to understand the situation.

The characters are well written and I found myself bonding with a few of them, even the less pleasant ones. I can absolutely see this book being turned into a highly enjoyable film with the levels of claustrophobia and flashbacks.

The only reason I’ve given this book 4 stars rather than a full 5 is that the ending didn’t quite do it for me, it was so close but didn’t quite pack the punch that I felt it deserved after such an amazing build up to that point.