I’m an unabashed fan of classic “choose your own adventure” style gamebooks. Sure, most of my fondness for the genre has its roots in nostalgia, but I still collect them (there are treasures to be found at used bookstores), and I’m continually amazed at just how many different series there were.

From the OG Choose Your Own Adventure books to Time Machine, Twistaplot, Find Your Fate, Endless Quest, Lone Wolf, Fighting Fantasy, and so many more, the 80s were the absolute heyday for immersive gamebooks.

But they’re still around, and there are a number that deserve more attention. In this series, we’ll highlight a few of the books and series that require you to read closely, make decisions, and hopefully avoid a gruesome end.

Escape Book is a series of (as of this writing) two books from Andrews McMeel Publishing that are billed as “escape room excitement in a book.” We’re HUGE fans of escape rooms around Roarbots HQ, so this certainly piqued my interest. And we’re even HUGER fans of choose-your-own-adventure style gamebooks, so we couldn’t get Escape Book: Mystery Island – the second book in the series – in our hands fast enough.

Despite the marketing conceit, the book feels less like an escape room (which would admittedly be a heavy lift for such a slim book; Mystery Island is less than 100 pages) and more like a beginner’s CYOA. But there’s nothing wrong with that.

Written by Stéphane Anquetil and with illustrations by Marcel Pixel, Mystery Island is a translation of a French book and places you in the role of a young castaway pirate on a “deserted” island in search of treasure. The only problem is that the island has a massive volcano at the center that’s about to erupt!

In order to escape, you’ve got to find the treasure and convince the pirate crew to leave in time. Along the way, you’ll encounter a few (relatively basic) puzzles to solve, find several important items you can pick up and add to your inventory, and fully explore the entire island.

The book presents you with a map (certain locations are off limits until you find or solve something else on a different part of the island) and combination tables with the available options for using one item on another item (once you have both in your inventory).

As I said, the puzzles are fairly easy, and there are no “bad endings.” Make the wrong choice, and the book gently tells you it was a mistake, go back and try again. There’s a single path through this book to one ending where you escape in the nick of time.

With that in mind, Escape Book: Mystery Island is a great introduction to gamebooks, especially those where you need to keep track of information (like inventory items and stats). It’s decidedly written for younger readers, and I’d say this one is good for younger elementary school kids and struggling readers. There’s very little frustration involved with this one.

The first title in the Escape Book series, The Cursed Warrior, is based on the Diary of an 8-Bit Warrior series, which is set in an unofficial Minecraft world, so if your littles are obsessed with Minecraft (as mine are), you may also want to give that one a go.