About the Book
Book: The Escape Game (The Game Masters Book 2)
Author: Gina Holder
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Release Date: May 5, 2026
20 years ago, the world’s leading enigmatologist disappeared…
Demi Kayne, owner of a popular puzzle shop, has spent years searching for her father, who vanished without a trace. When she cracks the code he left behind, the trail leads her to a secluded mansion—and straight into danger.
Liam Shepherd, a missionary with a passion for puzzles, is desperate to find his missing sister. His investigation brings him to Silver Falls, where his path collides with Demi’s in ways neither of them expects.
Drawn into a deadly escape game designed by a brilliant and vengeful mind, Demi and Liam must unravel twisted riddles and confront buried secrets before time runs out. Losing could cost them everything. Their faith and each other may be their only means of escape.
Review:
Demi never loses hope that her father will return home, but it has been twenty years and very few clues point to what might have happened to him. Until one day she finds a clue that leads her and her new friend, Liam, and his twin sister to the Ives Mystery House. With codes, secret rooms, and perilous booby traps I was interested in seeing what would happen next. I was also wondering how they were going to escape the mad woman who lived there and controlled their destiny.
If you enjoy learning a bit of the history of some of the codes and how they work, you'll enjoy this suspense-filled story. Liam's faith was evident throughout the story, which helped Demi resolve some of the things from her past and seek reconciliation.
I received a copy of this book from the author and Celebrate Lit. My opinion is my own.
Click here to get your copy!
About the Author
Gina Holder is a Christian award-winning author of romantic suspense and cozy mysteries filled with faith, intrigue, danger, romance, and epic twists you’ll never see coming.
She’s had an infatuation with books for as long as she can remember. She loves sharing uplifting messages from God’s Word and introducing readers to new and new-to-them authors on her blog.
When she’s not writing, Gina enjoys playing the piano, cooking, reading, watching Hallmark mysteries, and solving “escape room” puzzles. She loves growing in her craft as an author. She published her debut novel in 2017. Gina lives in Wyoming with her husband and daughter.
More from Gina
The Book I Almost Gave Up On
When I turned in the first full draft of The Escape Game last September, I hated it.
Not in a playful, self-deprecating way. I really, truly hated it.
I had that awful, hollow feeling in my stomach. The one that whispers, This isn’t good enough. You aren’t good enough. Why did you ever think you could pull this off?
Honestly, I believed this book was beyond my abilities.
And it was.
But I forgot I have Someone on my side who can do all things.
Back in 2022, this story idea was supposed to be simple. A shorter novel inside a collection. I had a fun premise, a few intriguing characters, and a basic plot: a second chance romance with the two main characters locked in a deadly mansion.
Easy peasy, right?
Wrong.
I realized the story needed space to breathe, so I wrote something else for the collection, and put this story back on the shelf until the right time.
Fast forward to 2025. The Escape Game was proposed as book 2 of The Game Master series.
I started writing. Characters pushed back. They wouldn’t talk. Inside my head, there was silence.
Some books flow. This one fought.
I wrestled with tone and pacing. I rewrote entire sections only to delete them again. Scenes that sparkled in my head fell flat on the page. I second-guessed everything.
My heroine was supposed to be the faithful Christian girl who wins the bad boy to the Lord.
She wasn’t.
And my hero? He was all wrong.
So, I did something terrifying.
I replaced him.
Completely.
I created an entirely new character—Liam Shepherd.
On the surface, Liam was perfect—kind, protective, devoted to the Lord, close to his family. Every Christian girl’s dream.
But fiction doesn’t work that way. Perfection isn’t compelling.
I asked God to show me Liam’s wound.
When it came, I cried.
No, I bawled like a baby.
Liam wasn’t abused. He didn’t come from a broken home. He had love and stability. Then tragedy struck, and he faced a choice.
He chose wrong.
And it haunted him.
But the troubles were far from over.
This wasn’t just a tricky plot or a stubborn manuscript.
This story touched some deep places in my own heart—places I didn’t expect to have to revisit. Writing it meant digging into tender, uncomfortable emotions, facing truths about fear, grief, and courage that I hadn’t fully confronted. It hit a little too close to home.
Some days it felt less like writing fiction and more like surgery.
And surgery is exhausting.
By the time I reached the end, I wasn’t excited. I was just tired. I turned it in because it was due, not because it felt finished.
Then the editing began.
If drafting this book was wandering through a dark forest, editing was finally being handed a flashlight. Sentences tightened. Motivations clarified. Scenes I thought were essential were cut, and others grew stronger. What felt hopeless started to feel possible.
Slowly—painfully at times—the story started to come into focus.
My editor asked hard questions. I rewrote the entire book. (Not completely, but it felt like it.)
Each round of edits chipped away at the parts I disliked and revealed the story underneath—the one I’d been trying to tell all along.
Somewhere along the way, something unexpected happened.
I stopped hating it.
More than that, I started to like it.
Everything clicked. The story finally had the depth—and the heart—it had been missing.
And now, sitting on the other side of the process, I can honestly say something I never imagined saying last fall:
I’m proud of The Escape Game.
Not because it’s perfect—no book ever is—but because it represents persistence. Growth. The courage to dig into hard places and stay long enough to find the heart of the story.
And that heart is what I hope you feel when you read it.
What started as a small, simple idea grew into something deeper than I expected. Something that required more from me than I thought I had to give.
And in the end, it became something God and I built together.
This book reminded me of something important:
We’re all first drafts.
God is shaping us, molding us … and we fight back. We look at our lives and wish things were different. We replay our wrong choices. We feel regret, frustration, and fear.
Sometimes, we even hate what we see.
But hating your draft doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:” Philippians 1:6 (KJV)
It just means God isn’t finished yet.
And sometimes, the stories we struggle with the most end up being the ones we’re proudest to hold in our hands.
Blog Stops
SydneySchmied books, June 26
Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, June 27
Lyssa Loves Books, June 28
Book Looks by Lisa, June 28
Babbling Becky L’s Book Impressions, June 29
Inspired by Fiction, June 30
Texas Book-aholic, July 1
For Him and My Family, July 2
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, July 3
Holly’s Book Corner, July 4
Mary Hake, July 5
Pause for Tales, July 6
Cover Lover Book Review, July 7
The Lofty Pages, July 8
Lights in a Dark World, July 8
Lily’s Corner, July 9
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, July 10
Giveaway
To celebrate her tour, Gina is giving away the grand prize of a copy of The Puzzle Within and a $50 Amazon gift card!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.
https://gleam.io/P1o9U/the-escape-game-celebration-tour-giveaway
Five sons of an English duke, all raised in the Rocky Mountains…
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He’s the man of her dreams—she just doesn’t know it yet.
Grace Hitchcock
