The Smaller Evil

A troubled teen gets drawn into an enigmatic “self-improvement” retreat (possible cult?) and soon find that’s there’s nothing holistic (or safe?) about the type of enlightenment this program is offering.

“Suspenseful and enigmatic.”—Laura Ruby, Michael L. Printz Award winning author of Bone Gap

“Readers interested in a Gillian Flynn-style take on cults and self-help retreats will be intrigued.”—School Library Journal, starred review

Stealing from his drug-dealing step-father and running away from home are worth the risk for seventeen-year-old Arman Dukoff. Because running away means running to Beau, the charismatic self-help guru who sees something in Arman he’s never seen in himself. Arman doesn’t think twice about accepting Beau’s offer to spend a week at his retreat compound in the coastal hills of Big Sur. Arman doesn’t think twice about a lot of things—like how he’ll fit in with the compound’s wealthy guests or what it means to “shed the toxic influences of Western society in order to reach an enlightened state of personal agency.”

Or as Beau puts it, to evolve.

When the compound’s gates close, Beau’s program is anything but a straight path to self-improvement. Caught in a whirlwind of dubious morality, bizarre rituals, and incomprehensible encounters with a beautiful girl and a beguiling knife, Arman finds evolution feels less like change and more like the failure he’s always known. But when he’s pushed to test just how deep the knife will cut, failure is the least of his worries. There’s nothing safe about enlightenment.

But maybe that’s the point. Like Beau says—sometimes the greater good requires the smaller evil.