Other Ways to Read:
About to achieve the financial freedom they have always dreamed of, Lauren and Jamie’s lives couldn’t be better. The investment they made with six of their friends has paid off and Lauren can see investing her inheritance was the right thing to do.
When Jamie introduces her to Steven, a Prophet, she is hesitant to believe he’s the real deal. But Harry, one of the other investors, speaks very highly of him, and Harry is just about the nicest man on the planet. He would never steer them wrong.
But when Steven and Harry start to receive a large salary from the Foundation set up to do good works and funded by twenty-five percent of all the profits, Lauren starts to believe that Steven might actually be a conman. She begs Jamie to consider that he is being fooled, but Jamie knows in his heart that Steven is who he says he is and desperately wants his wife to give The Prophet a chance.
Steven and Harry, who now calls himself The Apostle, slowly take control of the lives of the investors, and as their wives submit to The Prophet's authority, Lauren has to consider that she could be wrong. Nobody else is questioning the leadership and guidance of The Prophet, and her resistance is putting her marriage in jeopardy.
But when Harry interferes in their future plans for a romantic getaway, Lauren tells Jamie that it is over. She refuses to come under anyone’s authority and can no longer live with a man that has been sucked into what she knows has become a cult. The Collective has not bought the freedom they promised but has ensnared her husband and their friends.
Will Jamie come to his senses in time to save his marriage or is Lauren wrong and Steven is the Prophet he claims to be?