An escape room which goes wrong, ending in the murder of one of the players. I liked the premise of this book, and though it was the type that might have been written by Ben Elton, who has written on a similar theme linked to Big Brother and The X Factor. The problem is, it didn’t make sense in the end. We get to know three of the four contestants, who all want to get a share of the $60,000 prize. We also get to know the murderer but we never find out why he murders that person nor his motivation. We don’t find out why the owner of the escape room is involved in the murder in the way he is (being so careful here not to give away spoilers). I did give up on the book at one point, but picked it up again as I wanted to know the answers to these questions, but even after finishing it I didn’t know. It wasn’t because it was complicated – the answers were not revealed!

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book.

I enjoyed this book but feel like I missed something. For me there wasn’t enough focus on the ending and the why.

The blurb of this book was so intriguing and I was so sure this book should have been right up my alley. Unfortunately is failed to deliver and it failed hard.

First of all let me point out what I've said few times already - Im honestly so tired of authors setting their horror books in the 80s and 90s to leech on our nostalgia. There is honestly no real reason for it, except to make us starry eyed and more likely to spend our money.

Oj, since I got that off of my chest - quick review.
This book is boring.
Here I said it. There is no one really likable (except maybe for Kendra, but barely) for me to connect to and to root for.
The story is told in series of police interview etc (which is quite a popular format right now) and I usually like it, but here they were just tedious. Every page felt like a chore, which is a shame really because full-contact haunted house story sounds more than amazing.

Unfortunately I can't recommend this book.

I’m sure I’ve said before that I absolutely love horror. Haunted house and ghost stories are my favourite but I love the occasional very bloody murderfest too. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Reprieve but the cover and the synopsis suggested violence and I couldn’t wait to dive in.

After her father’s death, horror fan Kendra is uprooted by her mother to live with relatives in Nebraska. Kendra is reluctant to leave behind her friends and the town she knows, especially as she has heard that Nebraskans are less than friendly towards non-white people like her. Jaidee is a Thai student at university in the States, who is just trying to navigate life as a gay man while searching for the teacher he fell in love with. Leonard is a lonely, desperate hotel manager who has more than a few dodgy dealings on his plate. Lincoln, Nebraska is home to horror escape room venue Quigley House. If contestants can get through the final room of the house, a big cash prize awaits them but only one team has ever made it. When a shocking, violent murder occurs on the premises, those present are called in to testify.

The game within Quigley House sounds terrifying and I’m sure I could never make it through. During the scenes in the house itself, I was thoroughly caught up in the action and my heart was in my mouth because I didn’t know what was happening -much like the contestants. It seems like such a frenzy of panic and fear. I was yelling ‘reprieve, reprieve!’ throughout these pages because I just wanted some downtime with one of the characters.

There are some discussions about the wonders of horror and why it’s loved by so many of us. I love books that do this because I think horror is a genre that is overlooked very often. The blatant scary or gory outer shell is all that can be seen by some people and the inner workings of what it really is and why horror works just isn’t thought about. Good horror stories are about much more than the scares and to get to those romances, coming-of-age moments or exploration of human emotions, you have to endure the odd fright or two.

Leonard is an unlikeable character but one that we all definitely know. When he meets the even more unsavoury John Forrester, who runs Quigley House, Leonard is taken in by the macho, misogynistic businessman and this leaves Leonard to leave his previously beloved wife, Mary. He seems to inherit John’s annoyance for everything that women do that isn’t sex and it was really sad to see this change in him.

Leonard’s storyline was the one I enjoyed the least and I spent a lot of time unsure how he would loop into the main story. He ends up jetting off to Thailand, under John’s influence, and falls in love with a prostitute there. I think this experience does bring him a little way back to who he was before he met John but these chapters took me away from the main action. To some readers, they will be welcome reprieve (ha!) but I found myself just wanting to get back to the juicy stuff.

John Forrester is a shady character from the offset and I had no doubt that he would be the orchestrator of anything deadly at Quigley House. He’s incredibly creepy around Kendra and the other girls who work there and seems to be all about doing whatever it takes to get his business some attention. Again, he’s a character that we all know exists, so kudos to Mattson for creating a believable, very scary villain.

There is quite a lot of commentary on racism and xenophobia in the US and I really appreciated this slant on the book. Of course, these are the real horrors of our world and I loved viewing them alongside the manufactured horror in the book. Jaidee is Thai but none of his fellow students seem to know or care about this. Kendra is mixed-race and certainly feels as much after moving to Lincoln, Nebraska. There is also reference to the hypocrisy that white Americans show when foreigners don’t know their hometowns. I’m not sure I’ve ever read about this in this manner and certainly not in a horror novel before. It just goes to show that these things can and should be talked about everywhere.

The heartbreaking idea of pursuing love endlessly and passionately is alive in both Jaidee and Leonard’s storylines. Jaidee can’t stop thinking about a teacher that he fell in love with years before and firmly believes that all he has to do is keep trying to find him. This means that he misses other opportunities to be happy and I really wanted him to just realise that his love for Victor won’t be the only one in his life. For Leonard, it’s a slow realisation of the mistakes he has made and the desire to make this one avenue with Boonsri work, as he probably feels its his last chance for happiness. In both cases, their efforts are futile and we know that from the start even if they don’t.

Reprieve is a unique, multi-layered horror novel with some very well-written, real characters and some important themes discussed. It is quite meandering in places and there were certainly sections that I wanted to skip. However, the ending was satisfying and I was certainly drawn into the screams of Quigley House and thrown into a Halloween mood.

James mattson pulls no punches! I loved this book. The characters and the plot had my stomach in knots. One minute I was all tense, and then I was crying. It had this air about it that sucked me in. This has great plot development, with thrilling climaxes that had me hooked.

This is a brilliantly-plotted debut that will have you staying up late in an effort to squeeze in just one more chapter before bed. If you're a fan of psychological horror and true crime, then this is definitely a must-read. It's dark, complex and hugely entertaining!

Starting with the cover. I had an ebook but the cover the physical copy is definitely eye catching and would draw my attention in a shop.

I had seen this book everywhere due to ARCs so I was glad to be provided an ARC from NetGalley for review (thank you NetGalley). I had read the blurb only and not paid much attention to what other people were saying about it. I haven’t read a lot of horror so definitely wanted to read it.

None of the characters were particularly likeable apart from Kendra. She is a black girl in a predominantly white community and the book deals with the horror of the real world and the racism she has to endure. They all have flaws and traits that add to the story. Jaidee who you would expect to be more understanding of being a minority is racist and an obsessive. He and Leonard annoyed me most. The book addresses other social issues and this was something I though was unusual for this genre.

I can’t say this was nail biting or terrifying. I can’t really say it’s a horror (not that I’ve read much to compare it to). I didn’t feel unnerved or anything. I liked that there were the trial transcripts and then the serious on the escape room cells. I felt maybe three as a little too much background and not enough escape room. Both were essential to the story but one outweighed the other a little too much. There was not much on the escape rooms really and it’s what I came for.

The premise was a good one and I did enjoy the story. It was a unique plot and if you enjoy escape rooms (like I said, more would be better), people being manipulated and pushed to their limit then give it a read.

Quigley House, a haunted house experience like no other. Its immersive dark and only one group has ever won. A group finally make it to the last cell but they're in for a real nightmare when a man breaks in. As those involved look back over the incident and what led them there that day.

This is a really dark and twisted story. Theres a lot going on and it does draw you in. The story jumps around a bit as we get to the know the characters. Some sections read like a true court hearing which was an interesting touch. The ending was well done if bittersweet but it fitted with the context of the story. Its a story where none of the characters are instantly likeable but you start to warm to Kendra. Jaidee was a trickier one to like. The writing was well done and you easily got a sense of how creepy the house was. An interesting story with some dark themes.

This was one of those books that I was really looking forward to reading, the premise sounded so good. But sadly the story didn’t quite work for me. There were parts that had me gripped and then others that it just seemed to fall a little flat. There was a lot of back story which I appreciate readers need to know.

The best part is the game itself, four contestants have to compete in a pretty ghoulish game. They have to go through 6 cells in each one there are not nice creatures, they are there to prevent the contestants from grabbing the number of envelopes they need to go on to the next cell. If they win the prize is £60,000 and a t shirt. If the contestants want to leave they have to shout ‘reprieve’. The house where it all takes part is Quigley House, Lincoln, Nebraska, a house which is full if smoke and mirrors. Would you dare give it a go?

In 1997, 4 people had done this Jaidee, Jane, Victor and Bryan but something goes catastrophically wrong.

The story is told through Leonard Grandton a hotel manager, Kendra who works at Quigley house and is Bryan’s cousin, and Jaidee Charoensuk an international student from Thailand and a competitor. In between their narratives, there are court transcripts through the contestants progress throughout the game.

Most of the characters have some sort of flaws and traits as the story progresses the reader learns more and more about each contestant, there are many thought provoking things discussed, sexual identity, racism, sexism and politics. For me I found it a little slow to get going and found myself losing concentration, but that may be just because I like a fast paced read. So the slower style may suit other readers.

I found parts of the story a little repetitive, it is supposed to be a horror but I didn’t get that feeling from it at all, yes some of the things were a little gross but not really scary. You also have to try and keep track as to who is narrating as it’s not always clear as it jumps about a bit.

I would like to thank #netgalley and #Bloomsburypublishing for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest, fair and unbiased review.

This wasn't what I expected at all. I really liked the central focus - a novel set in a haunted house/escape room - but there were a lot of characters with a lot of back stories and it was quite hard to keep track of what was going on. In a way it felt like it was doing too much - you get huge chunks of subplot telling you a character's entire life story to try and make sense of how they behave in one small moment - but at the same time the character development was really well done and well thought-out. I have to admit I didn't entirely understand the ending - I think maybe it could have been a bit more explicit (or maybe I missed something!). But the sequences within the haunted house were really well imagined, and it was very visual/visceral. I think it could work really well as a film.

A very different take on the horror genre.

The first thing I’m going to say about Reprieve is that it isn’t a horror novel. I’m mentioning this because everything I’d heard about it, plus the cover, screamed horror to me, so I went in with very specific expectations. It’s actually better described as a sensitive study of three characters and the events that bring them together. It’s a deeper story, and less plot-driven, than I anticipated.

Everything revolves around the Quigley House – which is referred to as an escape room in the blurb, though that phrase never appears in the book, where it’s 'an extreme haunted-house attraction' or simply 'a haunt'. The characters are Kendra, a horror-obsessed teenage girl who ends up working there; Jaidee, a student from Thailand who moves to the US in pursuit of the American dream and, more pertinently, a teacher he has a crush on; and Leonard, a sad-sack hotel manager who is tangentially, albeit crucially, connected to the owner of the Quigley House.

Because the book opens with an extract from a courtroom cross-examination, we know a crime is committed at the Quigley House; that someone’s life is threatened at the very least. But this comes second to the backstories of our three main players. Kendra’s desperation to impress (and thus keep) her long-distance boyfriend; Jaidee’s struggles to assimilate, which lead him to develop harmful biases of his own in an attempt to claw back some sort of identity; Leonard’s destruction of a happy relationship through misplaced jealousy and paranoia – it’s a cocktail of insecurities and prejudices that ends up tying these people together. Kendra is a loveable heroine; Jaidee and Leonard are characters I both disliked and felt enormous sympathy for.

I’ve ended up shelving Reprieve as horror anyway, because I enjoyed all its allusions and references to horror tropes, and after all, what is Kendra if not an atypical Final Girl? But I’m already forgetting the details of the plot, and the atmosphere didn’t make much of an impression either. The people are what will stay with me. I could have happily read much, much more about each of them.

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing U.K. for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Reprieve’ by James Han Mattson in exchange for an honest review. I complemented my reading with its unabridged audiobook for an immersive experience.

1997 Lincoln, Nebraska - Quigley House offers an extreme haunted house experience that includes a full-contact escape room. In six terrifying challenges teams of four contestants each have to collect a set number of red envelopes to win a huge cash prize. That is if they make it to the sixth cell, most call out the safe word - reprieve - after the first cell.

The team whose experience is at the centre of the plot is composed of Bryan, Jaidee, Victor and Jane. By the end of the night, one of them will be dead.

I admit that escape rooms in general give me the wiggins, so I approached this novel featuring an intense escape room with some trepidation. However, while some chapters take place in the various cells, most of the narrative explores the events leading up to that fatal night, character development, and transcripts from the subsequent court case.

‘Reprieve’ has three point of view characters. Team member Jaidee, a student from Thailand in his freshman year at the University of Nebraska and Bryan’s roommate; then there is Leonard, a local hotel manager with a connection to the owner of Quigley House; and finally Kendra, Bryan’s fifteen-year-old cousin recently moved with her mother from Washington D.C. to Nebraska following her father’s sudden death.

Kendra was by far my favourite character: a goth girl wise beyond her years and deeply into all things horror. Aside from being an outsider by temperament, she is also a black girl in a predominantly white community. Due to her interests she gets a part time job at Quigley House.

‘Reprieve’ is a structurally complex novel in terms of movement through time and shifting perspectives. While not supernatural horror, ‘Reprieve’ combines aspects of various genres including literary horror, mystery, thriller and suspense along with social commentary on culture, privilege, otherness, identity, and racism. So, it has weight as well as jump scares.

Despite its strong gore and my aversion to escape rooms, ‘Reprieve’ proved a big hit with me as I am all for literary horror and genre-spanning novels. I found it intelligent and thought-provoking with well developed characters both main and supporting. I especially appreciated its Part V, set in 2019, as it brought a sense of closure.

Highly recommended.

I requested this book based on the blurb and the cover, but found what I was expecting (Saw style escapade) wasn't really what I got.
The premise was interesting, but I didn't really enjoy how the story was told through court transcripts and felt it jumped about a but between present and past.
I found none of the characters to be particularly likeable and felt that there were pacing issues, at points the story seemed very drawn out, but rushed at the end.
My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for my eARC in return for my honest review.

Quigley House is an escape room experience with a difference, it's a full contact experience meaning the contestant groups can be manhandled by the actors but they aren't allowed to react. Told through the court interviews and flashbacks of various people involved we get a two pronged narrative. The main characters been a young teen called Kendra and one the the players Jaidee, we witness their lives and how they become involved in Quigley House. We know from the outcome that a killing has happened during a game and as the story develops the plot unfolds leading us to some reveal moments. There are multiple themes going on here whi ch I felt got in the way slightly, think it's trying to tick lots of boxes rather than sticking with more important plot developments. I found it easy to read and it moved along nicely but did feel we didn't get to the bottom of the John Quigley's reasoning and why the outcome happens as it does. The horror works to a point but this could also work as a Young Adult read.

I was attracted by the blurb and expected a very exciting novel, one able to keep on the edge.
My expectations were high and I was a bit disappointed.
There's plenty of potential, there're very interesting social remarks and a cast of very unlikeable characters.
But the suspense was missing and the book is too long making it a bit boring at times.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I’m really not sure how to feel about this book. I feel like maybe the author doesn’t either. It’s as if they couldn’t decide whether to be a horror book about a gory escape room, or about racism, or misogyny, or a YA romance… and so it didn’t quite settle on any of them, instead becoming quite a confusing read.

I requested this book as it seemed a great read for Spooky Season! The genre is described as Horror and the eye-catching red & green cover with a blood dripping envelope/invitation reinforced this (Waterstones are doing a beautiful dripping sprayed edges edition)

I was also pleased when it was chosen for a Tandem Collective readalong, to further get the hype going.

So I started my eArc and ... ugh. I was capturing it on my IG stories but within the first 58 pages there are 5 characters described as chubby, stout, broad, obese etc etc. The fatphobia got a bit wearing, so I left it for the night.

The next day I was not looking forward to picking up the book again. I checked some reviews on Goodreads and they all seemed a bit lukewarm. For the first time this year I am DNF'ing a book. And it feels great! For this reason I can only give the book one star.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the eArc

I wanted to read this book as it sounded like a locked room thriller & I was up for that. Lordy, it is so much more. A horror thriller I think you can call it - think American Horror Story with graphic descriptions but a good storyline backing it up.
Four contestants in a full contact haunted house escape room - one will die, who will be the killer?
The way the book is written takes some getting used to. It flits back & forth through time & focuses on different characters. The only one I really warmed to was Kendra.
I think the author missed a trick in not featuring the cells enough; for me I really ‘enjoyed’ the harrowing descriptions & general gruesomeness.
Not what I was expecting but a great read all the same.

Wow. This held my attention right from the start. A real roller-coaster, heart-pounder of a book that will keep you turning the pages until you're finished. A fantastic read.

This book is set in Quigley House Lincoln Nebraska. But everything inside isn't always what it seems.
The premise is unique and the book gets very intense throughout.
It's not what I would call a typical horror but it does have the whole horror vibe going on.

Four contestants must face unimaginable terrors in six different cells within the house without using the escape word 'Reprieve '.
Bryan,Jaidee, Jane and Victor battle against each other to win the cash prize and not forgetting the T-shirt.
Everyone will do anything to achieve the ultimate prize but which one will end up winning and which 9ne will die?

I’ll be honest, at first I wasn’t sure what this book was. I knew it had elements of horror but to begin with I thought perhaps it was a YA novel. Not that it would have been a problem; I just couldn’t quite work out what sort of book I was reading. As a consequence, I found it quite slow to get into.

The author takes us to the American mid-West in the 1997. In Lincoln, Nebraska, four people have reached the final cell in a house of horrors that subjects teams of four contestants to six levels or cells of challenge in a game where full contact is the order of the day and first aid kits are provided in every room.

The house is legendary amongst gamers and few ever make it through to claim the grand prize. We know from the outset that someone is dead and who has killed them. The intrigue comes from understanding who these people are, what has brought them to the house and how each has their own secrets and insecurities that has led them to what is frankly, a dilapidated, seedy attraction run by a man of doubtful repute.

Reprieve is a dark story. Not because it is a slasher fest, though there are the trappings of that, but rather because this book is a look at how the attitudes and morals of contemporary society drive people towards the need to feel and experience emotion in a world where people seek out extreme experiences in order to achieve that.

Quigley House is owned and run by the seedy John Quigley and is a full-contact horror experience where competitors compete against actors and a range of contrived special effects to find envelopes and thence progress from cell to cell, with each cell’s envelopes getting increasingly harder to find. The few who make it through to the end without using the safe word – ‘reprieve’ – will win a cash prize of an enviable $40,000

Reprieve concentrates on the profiles of the four contestants in the competing team and considers who they are and how they came to be together alongside transcripts from the courtroom proceedings where someone is on trial for murder.

This book works because the characterisation is insightful and has real depth. Kendra a young black teen has been dragged by her mother from Washington to Lincoln, Nebraska after the death of her father. Moving to Lincoln, in what is hardly the most diverse of US states- Kendra has to leave behind a burgeoning romance and the only friends she has to move to a city where she feels out of place. Her cousin Bryan, a University student, is her only touchstone in a world of unknowns. Bryan shares a dorm room with Jaidee Charoensuk, a Thai from Kanchanaburi, in the west of Thailand and best known for being the location of Bridge on the River Kwai. Jaidee feels driven to fit in to this mid-west American culture and goes to serious lengths in order to do so but his efforts only make him the object of derision as he fails time and time again to ‘assimilate’. His journey to the west from Thailand has been prompted by his experience of being taught English by Victor Dunlap, now a bank manager but once a teacher of English in Jaidee’s home town. The fourth contestant is Victor’s fiancée, Jane.

Reprieve is chilling and plays on all the classic horror tropes while exploring a range of attitudes and insecurities that worm their way into the psyche of these somewhat beaten down people. Then there’s the house owner, John Quigley, a creepy man whose bonhomie is patently false and whose motives are deeply suspect. When he befriends Leonard Grandton, a hotel manager, Leonard’s hitherto happy relationship implodes and he finds himself on a downward spiral that leads to some pretty gross and needy behaviour.

Reprieve is a novel about the American psyche and reading it gives an insight into how easy it was for Trump to rise to power amid a welter of prejudice and rampant insecurities which can easily take root and be taken advantage of, especially in what are referred to as the ‘flyover states’. Reprieve explores themes of racial fetishism in what is rightly a very uncomfortable way and there are echoes in here too of the dehumanisation that makes it all too easy to scapegoat outsiders.

Verdict: Though it’s not easily pigeonholed and sometimes the narrative is a little diffracted, Reprieve is a clever and tense read that plays on the classic horror tropes to produce an intelligent novel that has depth and insight and challenges the reader to think about cultural stereotypes. I’m not sure it is always successful as a riveting read, but it is unquestionably thought provoking and immersive.