Review: The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer and Tamara Moss

The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.  I also received a paperback of this book via a Goodreads giveaway.

This was a really fun YA murder mystery, especially if you like escape rooms.  I thing escape rooms are fun, but every time my family does one we end up fighting.  The book captured the dynamics of and escape room team pretty well.  Someone ends up taking the lead, someone ends up solving alot of the puzzles, someone feels left out, and other people mill around helping where they can.  In this case everyone was super good at solving puzzles and doing escape room stuff and the teams were crafted for their TV presence and social media views as the game was televised.  The teams weren't necessarily put together for the best chemistry, however our main characters on Team Helsing despite being set up for failure the entire game, end up working together pretty well.

The Escape Game is in its Fifth Season despite tragedy striking last season when a contestant was found murdered on set.  There were many suspects, the main suspect being her sister and fellow competitor Sierra who is back for season 5.  No one was charged with the murder, but Sierra is back to find out whodunit and find justice for her sister and win the prize money she was promised.  Along with her teammates Beck, Ari, and Carter; Sierra is able to uncover more clues to what happened that night.  But at every turn there seems to be some obstacle or missing puzzle piece that keeps them from finding the truth.

This was a little on the long side for me and parts of it were a bit slow.  I did enjoy it overall.  The games were very detailed and creative when it came to solving the puzzles and math sequences.  Some people will love that, while I think others will not.  I thought the plot was fun, and there are plenty of red herrings to throw you off the trail of who the real killer was.  I really liked how the relationships between the team evolved.  They started out a bit standoffish, but they really developed into a found family which I always love.  This does leave off on a tiny cliffhanger, which mainly indicates that there will be another book for our team to have another adventure.  For the purposes of this book, the story does end and the plot wraps up nicely.

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