#noescape by Gretchen McNeil

The Quick Cut: Six teens enter an escape room game with a million dollar prize and find themselves dying one at a time soon after they enter. A Real Review: Escape rooms are a trend of the more recent years that gets people to work together and solve puzzles. It's a great way to learn teamwork and find what you're capable of. For this group of teens, teamwork is necessary to escape with their lives. Seventeen year old Persey is someone nobody has heard of, but quickly finds at the center of attention. When she finds herself in the middle of an escape room competition with five other teens, they start as a group trying to win the grand prize. It quickly goes wrong when the competitors start dying one by one. Is there a way to escape without losing their lives? Or is something else going on? I enjoy the #murdertrending series and was looking forward to this prequel, but it doesn't quite have the same magic as the first two books. They definitely tie to the original books, but it doesn't become entirely evident until the end. The deaths in this one were darker than the original books, especially with that final one. Almost too gruesome for a young adult book in my opinion. Definitely made the mental images horrifying. While the dynamic between the competitors and their connections play out during the core of the story, the true plot wraps up at a rapid pace at the end. Almost too rapid. That final plot twist felt like one twist too many as well and could've been done differently. A gruesome horror story that gets too complicated in its connections. My rating: 3.5 out of 5