As I was searching through the bargain section of my nearest bookstore, I picked up Megan Goldin’s The Escape Room because I was curious if it had any relations to the two-film horror franchise, Escape Room. Alas, it did not, but this was still a pretty darn fun read.
We are first introduced to an icy group of Wall Street investment bankers who have been invited to participate in an escape room. They all think it’s part team-building and part proving themselves. The company is likely to make cuts soon, and they all feel they need to prove themselves in order to stick around. Alternating chapters are told from the perspective of former employee, Sara Hall. For a while, I wasn’t sure at all how these people’s stories overlapped, but it soon became clear that Sara endured some ridiculous things at Stanhope and Sons. Really, for her whole time at the firm she was enamored by the money and the things she could afford with it. Though compared to her other co-workers, Sylvie, Julian, Sam, and Vincent, she was modest and moral.
Sara did manage to form a friendship with Lucy, who’s on the spectrum, but extremely brilliant with numbers. She was the team’s secret weapon until she found out some things they didn’t want found out. Lucy ends up dead and from there, Sara’s life starts to spiral out of control. It was crazy to read about how Sara started off in the workforce like most college-broke people, then rose to financial highs, then brought to the lowest of lows both professionally and personally. I found Sara’s story much more compelling than that of her despicable co-workers stuck in their elevator escape room. They definitely deserve worse than that, and without giving too much away, they kind of do end up getting their lumps in the end.
The details in this book made me cringe so hard, and makes me regret ever wanting to work on Wall Street. While I’m sure things have changed significantly over the years, the wrongs described in this book still have to happen all the time. I know it’s still primarily a boys club, and even the women are as corrupt, if not more to prove themselves, then the men. Now, despite all of the uncomfortableness, this book was still really enjoyable, and I was interested to see how the fates of Sara’s co-workers all turned out. More importantly, I was interested in finding out about Sara’s outcome. That woman endured some serious crap in her life. A fun, twisty read if you’re interested.