Those Who Prey by Jennifer Moffett

I am a sucker for cult books, and Those Who Prey by Jennifer Moffett fits the bill perfectly.  This story is a slow burn that builds to a great ending.  Emily is a lonely college student, far from home.  As she is approached one day, she quickly finds a group of friends that accept her and welcome her.  As a reader, you can see the slow build as these friends draw her into The Kingdom.  And as Emily becomes more enamored with them, she becomes blind to the manipulation and control The Kingdom is starting to assert over her.  And when someone close to her dies, her eyes finally start to open to the true ways of The Kingdom.  Can she find a way out before it's too late? 

 

From Amazon: 

Sadie meets The Girls in this riveting debut psychological thriller about a lonely college freshman seduced into joining a cult—and her desperate attempt to escape before it’s too late.

College life isn’t what Emily expected.

She expected to spend freshman year strolling through the ivy-covered campus with new friends, finally feeling like she belonged. Instead, she walks the campus alone, still not having found her place or her people so far away from home.

But then the Kingdom finds her.

The Kingdom, an exclusive on-campus group, offers everything Emily expected out of college and more: acceptance, friends, a potential boyfriend, and a chance to spend the summer on a mission trip to Italy. But the trip is not what she thought it would be. Emily and the others are stripped of their passports and money. They’re cut off from their families back home. The Kingdom’s practices become increasingly manipulative and dangerous…

And someone ends up dead.