Katherine St. John is a professional at crafting escapist thrillers: Her usually beautiful protagonists discover themselves in distant settings, surrounded by folks they’re undecided they will belief. It all makes for hundreds of nail-biting suspense as stated protagonists notice they’d higher work out find out how to, properly, escape earlier than one thing really horrible occurs.
Fans of her earlier books, The Lion’s Den and The Siren, will devour St. John’s newest, The Vicious Circle, which conjures up that very same life-or-death urgency amid opulence. This time, the setting is a wellness heart named Xanadu, deep within the Mexican jungle. The luxurious compound presents a lot fodder for suspicion. (The bedrooms haven’t any doorways? What’s with all of the chanting?) It additionally serves because the locus for St. John’s exploration of shared beliefs-turned-toxic groupthink and the fuzzy line between enigmatic mysticism and delicate manipulation.
Former mannequin Sveta Bentzen is shocked to study that her estranged uncle, the well-known self-help guru and Xanadu founder Paul Sayres, left his complete property to her as an alternative of his spouse, Kali. All her life, Sveta has felt that she’s not sufficient, both for her loving however distant mom or her rich fiancé’s influential and scornful household. When she learns of her uncle’s loss of life, she grieves the connection they didn’t have and is set to make the lengthy, treacherous journey to Xanadu for the memorial service Kali will host there. Sveta’s confidence falters when lawyer (and good-looking former flame) Lucas joins the journey, however she perseveres, hoping to achieve an understanding with Kali whereas Lucas handles the funds. The Xanadu residents welcome them, however Sveta suspects that hostility might lurk beneath Kali’s serenity—and that the circumstances of her uncle’s loss of life might have been misrepresented, too.
Fans of “The White Lotus’ and Nine Perfect Strangers will relish Sveta’s race to discover a method to escape Xanadu earlier than it’s too late. Her hard-won journey to realizing her self-worth is as compelling as it’s deliciously ironic: Who knew all you needed to do to win confidence, love and internal peace is escape a creepy wellness heart?
Discussion about this post