Arcana by Jess Whitecroft

Psychology professor and cult expert Gus Fox doesn’t believe in deprogramming, but that means nothing to billionaire Graydon Winter, when he demands that Gus recover his son, Michael, from a cult. The cult – Arcana – lives off the grid and out of reach of civilization, and they’re led by a mysterious woman known only as Starling.

Armed with bullet points, numerous books and a wealth of experience, Gus heads to the California desert, expecting to find a cult but instead finding a small eco-village where the rain falls out of nowhere, new memories make no sense, and nothing is exactly as it seems. And then there’s Michael, who is bewitching in more ways than one.

As Michael and Gus’s initial attraction blooms into an intoxicating affair, the new lovers find themselves swept up in an occult drama that goes not only to the origins of Starling and Arcana but to painful and long avoided truths about who they really are.