ARC Review – The Art of Escaping

Hi friends!! With the release of this amazing book coming up in just two days I thought I’d finally post the review for it. I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review so here it is. Although I gave this book 3,75 stars (although I gave it 3,5 on Goodreads) I can tell you it’s a really enjoyable book and if you pick it up you won’t regret it.

The Art of Escaping
by Erin Callahan
★★★¾

When Will, a popular athlete from school, discovers Mattie’s act at an underground venue, Mattie fears her secret persona will be exposed. Instead of outing her, Will tells Mattie a secret, not even his girlfriend knows. Through a blossoming friendship, the two must find a way to express their authentic selves. Seventeen-year-old Mattie has a hidden obsession: escapology. Emphasis on hidden. If anyone from school finds out, she’ll be abandoned to her haters. Facing a long and lonely summer, Mattie finally seeks out Miyu, the reclusive daughter of a world-renowned escape artist. Following in Houdini’s footsteps, Miyu helps Mattie secretly transform herself into an escapologist and performance artist.

Told through the perspectives of the witty main characters, this funny and fresh debut explores the power of stage personas and secret spaces and speaks to the uncanny ways in which friendships transform us.

Okay, I’ll admit: this book was a bit hard to get into, but I believe that was because I wasn’t really familiar with the subject and my motivation wasn’t at its highest. Obviously, I wouldn’t give it a negative review or give up on the book because of that and I’m so glad I didn’t. As I mentioned, I wasn’t really familiar with escapology and so I had to kind of wrap my mind around it but after I did I got really into it and into the book itself.

Let’s talk characters, shall we?

First, we have Mattie. Mattie is not your typical main character. She’s not friendless, her family is not abusive in any way, and she does have a normal life. Except she keeps her secret obsession for escapology exactly that: a secret. Until she meets Will everything is fine really, she gets the daughter of her idol to train and mentor her and even if she’s not the easiest person to deal with, things go as well as they can go. In my personal opinion, Mattie is a really likable character and her narrative is really good to follow,

Next, we have Will. Our Will with Two L’s is not at all what he seems.  To the outside world, Will is the popular guy who’s just too cool to ever befriend someone like Mattie, but it isn’t until we see Will’s side of the story, we realize that’s not the case at all. Will does want a friendship with Mattie and even though he presents himself as the typical teenage jock that’s not who he is at all. And it isn’t until he meets Mattie that he realizes that he doesn’t need to be that person anymore and could be true to himself. For me, Will was like that friend you can’t help but love even if they make dumb decisions, so seeing him get that development made me so proud and my heart so happy.

Now onto our side characters.

If I’m being totally blunt here I thought I was gonna hate Miyu. I thought she was arrogant and unnecessarily rude but as the story moved forward I actually started to like her a lot. She grew on me just like she did with Mattie over time. I kind of wish we had the chance to see a little bit more of Miyu to maybe understand her better but I’m content with what we’ve got.

Then we have Frankie. Now, I immediately loved Frankie. As soon as he was introduced, I loved him so much, I just wanted to hug him all the time and protect him from all the evil and after knowing he was  Luso-American (his dad, I believe, was from Azores, Portugal)  I loved him even more. You would think that you’d be fed up because he’s so much younger than the rest of the characters and he would probably act kind of childish or immature but you realize that Frankie is actually really mature for his age.

Now onto Stella. Stella is Mattie’s best friend in the world. She’s practically the reason why Mattie turned into escapology or rather, her going to summer school is the reason. We don’t get to see that much of Stella, but from what we see of her we get the impression that she’s a fun girl full of surprises. She’s kind and caring and she doesn’t really care about what people think of her. Even though we haven’t followed Stella’s whole story we do get to see her plenty to enjoy her and her company just as much as everyone else’s.

We do get to see a bit of Mattie’s family but their presence isn’t all that relevant in the novel. We get to see more her brother and his friend than properly their parents which to be honest didn’t bother me all that much.

My overall thought of the plot is that even though it took me a second to get into it, I ended up really enjoying it and I honestly can’t wait to read more of Erin’s writings. The narrative is really fun to follow because I feel like the way she gave voice to both of the main characters was really realistic and that made it really easy to follow the story as well (hence the ¾).

Preorder the book here & here.