The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer and Tamara Moss (book review)

GENRE: YA Mystery

LENGTH: 403 pages

PLOT

In season four of The Escape Game, a reality show where teens compete in escape room challenges, Sierra Angelos’s sister Alicia was found murdered. Sierra returns for season five and is determined, alongside her Team Helsing, to find her sister’s killer.

CHARACTERS

There are four main characters who comprise Team Helsing. There is Sierra who is closed off and comes across as very unlikable at first. As the novel progresses and we get to know her better, we come to understand that it’s just a protective shell. Then there is Carter who is an influencer, but she uses a cartoon avatar and is actually incredibly insecure and timid. Third is Beck, who is the most affable among the quartet. He also has synesthesia, meaning sounds and words trigger distinct tastes for him. I thought that was really cool since I hadn’t ever read a character with such a condition before. Finally, there is Aditya ‘Adi’ who is stifled and controlled by his overbearing stage mom. He’s bookish and, while the producers on the &show find him charming, I didn’t really see that. He wasn’t a character who grabbed my attention as much as the others did.

Team Helsing initially doesn’t mesh well at all, and I was worried it would negatively impact the reading experience. They slowly started to bond and become friends, though, and even forged a sort of found family dynamic. As Carter would say, they became her people.

Notable side characters include the show’s producer Ranielle Russell, her husband and show host Louis Augustus Russell, and the show’s social media manager Vera. There is also Louis Russell’s co-host James ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald who is young, charismatic, and serves as Carter’s love interest. While Sierra’s sister is obviously deceased prior to the events of the novel, we get to know Alicia through a few interviews in the novel and her sister’s recollections.

Something I love is how diverse the cast of characters is. Carter is mixed race/half Trinidadian, Adi is South Asian, and Beck is transgender.

WRITING

The novel is told from the 3rd person POVs of the main quartet – Sierra, Carter, Beck, and Adi. The novel does include some mixed media elements – among them interviews, newspaper articles, and aerial views of the escape rooms (one of my favorite parts of the storytelling).

I loved how the escape rooms – and thus the characters’ teamwork and intelligence - played into the climax of the novel. The escape rooms themselves added natural tension to the novel given there was time pressure to solve them. As a writer myself, I also appreciated how each escape room had its own little storyline. They all felt well designed/thought out by the authors.

Outside of that, the pacing is kind of awkward. There are so many ‘reveals’ that are pretty obviously either not the true answer or only part of it due to how much of the book there still is to go. I wish they had just held off and gone for a final dramatic reveal.

If you like this book, then I recommend The Mystery of Locked Doors by Lindsay Currie. This is another book that sees a group of young friends traversing a series of escape rooms with high stakes.

Trigger warnings for: gun violence, stabbing, blood, implied child abuse, mention of gambling, poisoning, strangulation, sibling loss, drugging, and suicide.

FINAL RATING

If you can look past some of the annoying pacing, this is a very good novel. The characters are all well developed, and the escape rooms are fun. While the novel obviously deals with some more serious, dark concepts, it is also at many times a very fun read. The escape room scenes definitely keep you on the edge of your seat!

FINAL RATING: 4.5⭐️