Trapped by Bella Olson: A Glitter-Bomb Escape Room With Heart

If you’ve ever wished a middle grade adventure could feel like an escape room designed by a kid with unlimited glitter, snacks, and zero respect for “normal,” Trapped is exactly that ride. It follows Ava—an inventive, sporty, claustrophobic eleven-year-old—who stumbles into the facility of Dr. Heynis and gets pulled into a maze of riddles, traps, and utterly unhinged surprises. What starts as a “get out alive” challenge quickly becomes a loud, funny, surprisingly warm story about fear, friendship, and the kind of bravery that shows up even when you’re shaking.

Spoiler-Free Summary

Ava is the type of kid who thinks in inventions and contingency plans. She’s great at math, great at swimming, and great at outsmarting her prankster brothers—yet she has some very real fears, especially small dark spaces. On what should be a normal walk home, she takes a wrong turn, loses her map, and ends up face-to-face with a windowless, metallic facility that practically radiates “do not enter.”

Inside, Ava discovers she’s not the first kid to get swallowed by this place. Two girls—Luna and Maya—are trapped too, and the three quickly fall into survival mode.

As Ava tries to navigate the maze, the story escalates in unexpected directions: riddles, shifting hallways, and the unnerving sense that the building itself is playing games with them. Ava’s strengths—problem-solving, quick thinking, and sheer stubborn determination—become her tools, while her fears become the pressure point the book keeps pressing (in a way that’s tense, but still kid-readable).

When the plot expands beyond straightforward hallway-escape logic, it leans into big imagination. Through all of that, the friendship core stays steady. Ava, Luna, and Maya aren’t identical “besties” in the same voice; they’re a functional trio with different instincts, different tolerances for chaos, and different ways of coping—whether that’s planning, skepticism, or comic-level snack devotion.

My take on Trapped

This book’s superpower is its voice: it reads like a kid telling you the wildest thing that ever happened to them, with full confidence that you’ll believe every ridiculous detail because they fully believe it. That’s honestly hard to fake, and it’s what gives Trapped its charm. The humor lands consistently, because it understands how kids actually stack jokes.

Structurally, the story is essentially a sequence of escalating challenges—escape-room fiction with a middle grade heart. The pacing is relentless in the best way: chapters regularly end on hooks that naturally pull you into the next room, the next problem, the next “WAIT, WHAT?” The variety of obstacles is also a big win. Ava isn’t solving the same kind of puzzle repeatedly; she’s using different skills (physical, logical, emotional regulation) in different combinations, which keeps the book feeling playful rather than repetitive.

Ava is a strong MG protagonist because she’s competent and messy. She’s brave, but not fearless; she’s smart, but not calm; she’s resourceful, but still very much eleven. Her fears are not treated like a “quirk”—they’re actively used to generate tension and growth, especially when the facility forces her into situations that push those boundaries. The “do it scared” theme comes through clearly without ever stopping the story to lecture. It’s integrated into action, which is exactly how young readers absorb that kind of message.

The supporting cast is where the book becomes a full-on personality parade. Luna and Maya complement Ava well, and their dynamic prevents Ava from feeling like a solo superhero. And then there’s the book’s most memorable chaos ingredient: a comedic wildcard character who shifts the tone from “fun adventure” into “this is going to live in your brain forever.” That addition brings meta-humor and absurd logic that fits the book’s “weird is powerful” identity—and it keeps the story from feeling like a standard corridor-to-corridor escape.

However, sometimes the randomness of the book comes so quickly that the “rules of the world” blur. Middle grade readers will absolutely go with you into chaos, but clarity is what makes chaos satisfying. When the story is at its best, each surprise still feels like it follows a game logic with a trigger then a consequence, where you have to learn the new rule, then solve the next piece.

Overall, Trapped succeeds at what many MG adventures aim for and don’t always nail: it’s fast, funny, high-concept, and still tender underneath. It celebrates imagination without mocking it, and it treats “being weird” as a form of strength—especially when the world tries to trap you into being smaller, quieter, and less yourself. If you’re looking for a middle grade story that reads like a sugar-rush escape room (with a surprising amount of heart tucked inside the glitter), this one delivers.

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