Gaslight
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From Sundance Award–winning filmmaker and podcast creator Miles Joris-Peyrafitte and #1 New York Times bestselling author Sara Shepard, Gaslight is a tense thriller that dredges the inner workings of cults, the susceptibility of young minds, and the fragility of both friendship and marriage.
Rebecca is living a peaceful life in Nevada with her husband, Tom, and their two young children. Her past is in the past and she does a good job of keeping it there, until her old friend, Danny, shows up on the doorstep one morning, throwing her sweet family life into turmoil. Danny is nothing but a reminder of what Rebecca fled all those years ago, and all the secrets she’s keeping from Tom. She tries her hardest to manage the situation and figure out what Danny wants, but all Rebecca seems to find are layers upon layers of deception.
That deception has a lot to do with ISB, the cult Danny has been part of for ten years: a group of spiritual seekers living deep in the woods, cut off from their families and friends, led by a charismatic leader who’s a master at manipulation and mind control. Is Danny here because she’s trying to break free from the cult? Or is she on a recruiting mission? It’s hard for Rebecca to know when Danny’s telling the truth and when she’s lying, but one thing’s for sure: her presence might just blow up Rebecca’s life. As she scrambles to figure out Danny’s intentions, Rebecca begins to lose sight of the people she loves most—and the danger closing in on them all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A former cult member confronts her past when an old acquaintance shows up on her doorstep in this patchy collaboration between filmmaker Joris-Peyrafitte and YA author Shepard (the Pretty Little Liars series). Rebecca Williams lives a quiet life in Carson City, Nev., with her husband, Tom, and their two children. Tom doesn't know that, eight years earlier, Rebecca was a devoted member of the Infinite Spiritual Being Community, a cult led by charismatic manipulator Ben Rahm. After an emaciated young woman named Danny turns up at the couple's home and says she knows Rebecca, flashbacks reveal how Rebecca and Danny were first drawn into ISB by Ben's persuasive messages of self-reliance. In the present, Danny claims she needs Rebecca's help to break from Ben and his followers. Can Rebecca trust her? Or has Danny been sent to draw Rebecca back into Ben's malevolent orbit? The dual timelines contribute to the narrative's jerky pacing, and the authors' characterizations are thin, but the sections on Rebecca's life in ISB are chilling. It's a mixed bag.
