Puzzle House – Duncan Ralston

3/5 stars

Puzzle House started out very strong as an escape room horror. Six strangers are brought together by Alexei Vasiliev after his death to compete for the rights to a portion of his vast estate. Things aren’t as they seem, and it quickly becomes apparent that this game is not intended for everyone to win….just one.

The idea itself of an escape room Murder Castle was definitely an interesting one, and the rooms themselves were really cool to read. Each seemed to be tailored to one of the beneficiaries, and as the book wore on, you get to know the dark things in their past. The characters themselves were kind of eh; I was truthfully only invested in two of them. They all seemed fairly shallow and cardboard cutout-y to me; almost like all the creativity and intrigue went into the scenes themselves with next to nothing left for the characters.

Then things started getting hokey. While I always appreciate demonology and ancient myth, I don’t feel like it added to the plot at all. Really, it detracted for me as the book became less about cool murder escape rooms and more about completing a ritual without even trying to circumvent it. I also don’t really understand how all of these characters got involved with Infiniti. I can sort of see Oscar and Rudy, but what about Ileana, Henry, Jessica, and Joy? Why were they chosen when Joy and Jessica have a surface-level connection (at best), and Ileana and Henry didn’t seem to have a connection with Infiniti at all?

I wanted more out of this than what I got, truth be told. I was set up for harrowing escapes from near-death situations in booby-trapped rooms, but this just didn’t quite get there for me.