Review of The Perfect Escape

I have finally managed to finish a book! This is an accomplishment! Check out my review of The Perfect Escape!

The Perfect Escape by Suzanne Park

Published on April 7 by Sourcebooks Fire. Thanks to the publisher for providing an e-ARC for review.

Synopsis from Goodreads: Nate Jae-Woo Kim wants to be rich. When one of his classmates offers Nate a ridiculous amount of money to commit grade fraud, he knows that taking the windfall would help support his prideful Korean family, but is compromising his integrity worth it? Luck comes in the form of Kate Anderson, Nate’s colleague at the zombie-themed escape room where he works. She approaches Nate with a plan: a local tech company is hosting a weekend-long survivalist competition with a huge cash prize. It could solve all of Nate’s problems, and Kate needs the money too. If the two of them team up, Nate has a true shot at winning the grand prize. But the real challenge? Making through the weekend with his heart intact…

Review of the Perfect Escape

So I watch people on Goodreads and Twitter finish and rate book after book and … I’m struggling. Maybe it’s my anxiety plus the coronavirus plus the fact that I live in a place where, at the moment, things are pretty serious.

But I FINISHED THIS BOOK. YAY! And overall, I really liked it. It took me a while to adjust as I was expecting the book to be about the zombie escape room (based on the title) but it was actually more about two kids from completely opposite socioeconomic backgrounds who meet at the escape room and then, because each of them needs money, they decide to enter a survivalist competition together.

My favorite part of the book was the lighthearted quirky humor. Yes, there were serious topics in there, like class difference and neglectful parents and grief, but there was a lot of humor as well.

The romance was cute though not super swoony. There was this annoying character who kept lurking around making me think there was going to be a love triangle, but there was not.

The competition felt a little to me like Hunger Games lite, and wasn’t my favorite part of the book, because it meant that there were all these other new and random characters who, to me, took time away from the characters I’d bonded with.. I think the strongest parts of the book were Kate and Nate’s relationships with their families and their friendship (and growing romance) with each other.

All in all, I really liked the overall vibe of this book: the characters, the humor, and the way the issues were integrated in a way that worked. I’ll definitely keep this author on my radar!

If you’re looking for a cute, funny contemporary, definitely give this one a try!