With “The Mystery of Locked Rooms,” author Lindsay Currie introduces us to three best friends, middle school kids who love solving escape room puzzles, and who, at the start of the novel, beat the time to escape from the second-hardest escape room. It’s a feat only a few other teams have accomplished. Sarah Greene is pretty happy, but as the end of Chapter One says, “If I didn’t have to go home, this day would be perfect.” So we know life isn’t great for Sarah.

We learn that Sarah’s home life is tough because her father has chronic fatigue syndrome, CFS, and can’t work or do much of anything. Her mother works several jobs, but none are enough to really support them. A foreclosure notice is on the front door when she gets home, and that’s when she knows things are really bad.

But Sarah’s friends West and Hannah rally around her as they desperately think of anything that might save Sarah’s family. West mentions something called a Triplet Treasure, which is reputed to be in a funhouse in the next town. The girls had never heard of it and they begin to research it. There’s not much about it that’s known, and the background is kind of sad. Triplets were orphaned at the age of eight and didn’t see each other until they were adults. They built the funhouse, but one of them died, and it’s been empty and abandoned since.

While the talk of treasure is just a rumor, the three decide to try to get in and see what’s there. After all, the alternative of Sarah moving away is too awful to contemplate. The three friends call themselves the Deltas, and they need each other in ways that become clear as the story progresses. Currie sets most of the novel inside the mysterious funhouse as Sarah, West, and Hannah try to solve the puzzles in each room to make it to the end. And some of the different challenges bring out strengths that only one of the team members possesses, which serves to reinforce the idea that we all bring different strengths and weaknesses to everything we do. Teamwork, cooperation, trusting each other, and caring for each other, all those are important ideals even in—or maybe especially in—uncertain times.

Kids will love the nonstop action, the friendship, the unlikely heroes. But reading this as part of a book club or with a class would offer opportunities for an adult to focus on how each main character is like most of us, really good at some things and not at others. And each main character has a secret that they reveal to their friends during the course of this ultimate escape funhouse puzzle, and many of those reading this will be encouraged by Sarah admitting, at the end, that she had to overcome her fears. Because having fears, worries, problems, is a part of life, and reading about other kids overcoming their problems, helps.

Please note: This review is based on the final, hardcover copy provided by Sourcebooks Young Readers, for review purposes.