Looking For a Good Book

Escape Rooms … Reality TV … Game Shows … well of COURSE they’re going to be combined in an exciting made-for-TV-audiences fashion.

The Escape Game is the hottest ‘reality’ show on television. Create teams of smart teens, each with different abilities and have them compete in getting out of escape rooms, and you have a recipe for thrills and excitement and … murder. Just six months ago, during season four, contestant Alicia Angelos was discovered murdered on the set.  Of course that’s not enough to derail a show. Now season five is just getting underway with a new group of contestants, including Sierra Angelos – Alicia’s sister whom everyone believes got away with her sister’s murder.

Sierra isn’t here to compete for a game show prize – she’s here seeking a different set of clues. Sierra wants to see justice for her sister and to uncover the real killer.  Of course her team needs to stay in the contest if Sierra wants to stay on set and look for her sister’s killer. But the more she discovers the more she realizes that the stakes of the game are much higher than simply winning a prize – the stakes are deadly.

I am not a fan of ‘reality’ shows at all. I don’t watch them. I won’t watch them. What little I’ve seen (usually by way of commercials) it’s all about creating drama drama drama. Which of course is great for certain YA groups. High drama books are very popular. So this makes a lot of sense to have a high drama book set on a high drama television stage.

Regarding escape rooms … while I love puzzles and being challenged to think about how to solve something, I’ve never been a fan of escape rooms.  I’ve only been to my first one recently (dragged to it by family) and while it was okay, it’s not something I’m eager to do again. But in a book – I’m all for it. Give me the pieces of a mystery and I’m happy to put on my detective cap and try to solve it.

So despite my lack of interest in reality television and escape rooms, this book intrigued me. As a book, these concepts work together really well and I thought authors Marissa Meyer & Tamara Moss put together a clever story.  Of course you really have to accept two pretty big premises right off the bat – that a show could continue after a murder on their set, and that the sister of the murdered girl, would agree to be on the show, not even a year after the death.

The different sets of characters were interesting and sometimes fun but I found them under-used. I often wanted to follow them more through the escape rooms and watch them work as a team. During these moments of the book I was totally into the book. But when we veered more toward Sierra’s search, I lost interest. I don’t think her character was set up as richly as the others’ given that it’s her story more or less.

Maybe that’s some of the problem I had.  Who’s story is this? It’s Sierra’s, of course, but there’s so much here that doesn’t really impact her. The games on set are more fun and interesting and while I understand how they impact Sierra’s ultimate goal, it’s just not a strong impact.

This is the sort of book that’s fun to read at the time, but once it’s done, leaves no lasting impression. Once I hit ‘publish’ on this review, I likely won’t ever think about the book or characters again. Which is extra too bad for the publisher since the very last words of the book are

(!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!)

To be continued…

Yup … the end is not in sight. However, I did feel that this particular book had a complete story (beginning, middle, and end).  It just added a little fuel to hopefully keep us interested enough to come back again. I’m sure it will work for many, but not for me.

Looking for a good book? The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer & Tamara Moss is a marriage of reality TV and escape rooms, with a fun cast of characters who don’t do enough (because they ARE interesting and we want to see them more) and with a plot that gets a little lost in the more exciting escape room competition.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

The Escape Game

authors: Marissa Meyer & Tamara Moss

publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

ISBN:  9798217006120

hardcover, 416 pages