A quirky k-horror read with murky characters ★★☆☆☆

When the notorious Quigley House escape room ends in a real murder, we revisit the contestants’ back stories and witness statements to find out what really happened and why…

I anticipated a horror mostly focused on the gory escape room ideals but much of the story focuses on Jaidee, Kendra, and Leonard as we find out what brought everyone to this deadly moment.

Many of characters are disturbing and slightly repugnant: Thai student Jaidee’s racism and misplaced obsession with his English teacher; Leonard’s sexism and aggressive pursuit of a relationship with a Thai prostitute; and John Quigley’s shady underworld deals and subsequent brainwashing of Leonard.

It is this manipulation and racist undertone which ultimately leads to a seemingly unmotivated murder where stunts become real and a person might just be the colour of their skin.

This was such a thought-provoking and tense book.

Quigley House is a full-contact escape room where teams of 4 attempt to go through 5 cells without saying the safeword to receive a cash prize. We follow a group through the house until just before the last room a man makes his way into the cell and kills one of the contestants. As we weave through the circumstances that brought all these characters to this house we realise just what prejudices and beliefs led to the tragedy occurring.

First off, I thought this was a literary masterpiece. The style of slowly delivered information painting a picture of just who these characters are when you already know the outcome adds a new layer to the usual storytelling. The use of court transcripts embedded between particularly highlighting their perceptions of the event.

It's safe to say that the characters here were written beautifully. I found none but 2 to be likeable, good people but even though we switch POV I didn't find that any of the characters were annoying or uninteresting. I also didn't find that there were any perspectives I didn't want to see. Each gave a new diverse point of view. The characters were so glaringly imperfect humans in such a way that you relate but also find it interesting to see.

The setting itself is something new to me and the idea of a full-contact horror house as the backdrop of this exploration is so different and interesting to me. It's not a generic social horror or thriller and offers conflicting opinions or perspectives while getting its point across.

The only thing that brought this down for me was the ending, while you understand how everything came about I still had a large number of questions. I'm not entirely sure whether it's me just missing the inference but this book did leave me both frustrated and annoyed.

Overall I felt like I got a lot out of it and it was a very interesting read, I would recommend.

Like all great books in this genre the true horror comes in the 'real life' scenes - love, loss, racism, the grooming of a vulnerable man are the real scares here - although there are some nice jumps in the horror locked room game. This is a really refreshing take on the genre - a great read.

Reprieve is a novel that combines horror with an exploration of people and social dynamics, as an unlikely group try to compete in a full contact haunted house escape room. In 1997, four contestants take part in Quigley House, a controversial full contact horror experience that you must make it through collecting red envelopes and not shouting the safe word, 'reprieve'. However, in the final cell, a man breaks in and kills one of the contestants. Combining the stories of some of the people there that night—an employee who encouraged her cousin to take part, a hotel manager drawn down a questionable path, and a gay international student looking for belonging—with testimony, it turns out that who is to blame might be more complex.

I was drawn into this novel by the distinctive, bright cover and the blurb, which sounded unique and intriguing, and it did not disappoint. From the start, which opens with a transcript about what happened that night, you have questions, but the book doesn't focus just on exactly what occurred, but sets up the backstory of some of the main characters, exploring their lives and motivations that led them to being at Quigley House that night. In particular, Kendra, a teenager who loves horror, has just been uprooted to Nebraska, and feels out of place in a majority white area but has her cousin to rely on, and Jaidee, a Thai student who goes to college in Nebraska to look for his former English teacher who he has a crush on, had intriguing stories, exploring not just choices and motivations, but race and fitting in.

The combination of the tension of the horror side of the book, as snippets are given of the team working through the cells of Quigley House, and the exploration of the characters, especially around racism and fetishisation which comes out through Kendra, Jaidee, and Leonard's stories in different ways, works very well, making a complex yet gripping novel that shows that horror as a genre isn't so simple. There's some interesting questioning of horror tropes too, and around the representation of non-white people in horror, especially black characters being killed, and what this might mean for black horror fans.

In general, the book doesn't shy away from depicting uncomfortable situations, not in terms of horror (though some people might find the Quigley House scenes scary), but things like culpability when a man's downward spiral becomes manipulated by someone else, or when someone tries so hard to be white. What's clever is that the horror house elements almost become a reprieve (yep...) from the complexity of the lives of the characters, because jump scares would be easier to unpick than racism, prejudice, and complicity.

To quickly summarise Reprieve, I'd go for 'come for the full contact haunted escape room, stay for the complex social commentary'. It's impressive how well crafted this book is in terms of structure and the ways the characters connect, though fans of straight 'horror' might be disappointed at the lack of twists and turns.

This had all the hallmarks of a novel that I should really have enjoyed - horror, scares, fast paced, a unique writing style...so why am I giving this such a low rating? I hated the characters. I understand that this may have been the point of this novel - social dynamics et al but the characters ruined it for me. I found no saving grace in any of these characters; in fact, I finished this novel frustrated and angry. Is that the purpose? I'm not sure - reading others reviews, it seems I am in a minority but hey, this one just wasn't for me.

This book is incredible on so many levels its actually quite hard to know where to begin.

With the basics I guess. If you are a fan of horror you'll love this. A creepy house, a dangerously addictive game to play where money can be won -if you can face down the scares and don't shout Reprieve. I mean how brilliant is that,especially given that the author has a keen eye for excellent characterisation and will make you love or detest the contestants before their challenge even begins. You also know this is a game that pulls no punches and not everyone will make it out alive..

But Reprieve serves another purpose. Without giving too much away, this is also a blistering social commentary on the world we live in, on race and identity and the real bias of human interaction whether it is purposeful or not.

I adored it. Reprieve is wildly entertaining and also hugely intelligent, written in a literary style that engages throughout and with an immersive, descriptive sense that gets inside your head. Hugely thought provoking whilst covering you in blood. I mean what else could you ask for from your horror novel.

Highly Recommended.

I had a blast reading this.

Quigley House is a full-contact haunted house where teams of 4 people attempt to go through five cells to win a pretty cash prize. It's all fun and giggles (though not really) until someone gets murdered. Reprieve tells you who has been murdered and who the killer is right off the bat, yet through snippets of the trial, interrogations, flashbacks, and following the characters you end up understanding how everyone ended up playing this crazy thing and why it ended this way.

I have to say I became obsessed with the book since the instant I saw it in NetGalley and I'm SO glad this didn't disappoint. Highly recommend it.

From the day i started this book I'd been hyping it up to anyone who would listen and I'm glad to say that it remained compelling until the very end. The characters felt like real believable people, the writing was interesting, the story original, and really why has no one set a crime novel in an escape room before? The chronology jumps around a LOT but somehow never ends up being confusing. I enjoyed this a lot!
(Recieved for free in advance from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

Thank you - we've included James Han Mattson's Reprieve as a Caboodle Firsts and in our Caboodlers' Corner article, '22 books to look out for in your local bookshop'.

An absolute beast of a book - in the best possible sense. I couldn't put it down. This was such a clever idea, and masterfully executed. I loved and felt for every character. Brilliant.