Books Like Nine Perfect Strangers: 9 Wellness Retreats That Turn Into Cults

Did you know that a wellness retreat is, for a lot of its guests, closer to a clinic than a vacation? According to a survey of 2,661 retreat guests worldwide, more than four in ten arrived with at least one medical condition. Back pain, arthritis, high blood pressure, fatigue, stress. The average guest was 58 years old. So the woman checking in isn’t on vacation. She’s hurting, she’s paid a lot to be here, and she wants somebody to finally take care of her.

A cult goes looking for exactly that person, which is why the wellness retreat and the cult sit so close together in these books. A lot of these cults use people as free workers, and people freely commit to that work because they feel someone is actually looking out for them. When they’re given the tiniest morsel of love from these cult leaders that makes them feel special, they’re willing to give everything. That’s tragically sad. A spa with a price list works the same way. You show up needing help, and the person in charge decides when you get it.

That is the setup of Nine Perfect Strangers. According to Kirkus, the guests at Tranquillum House are given blood tests on arrival and told to start with a five-day “noble silence” in which they’re not even supposed to make eye contact: “This was the moment when the guests should probably have fled, but they all decided to stay.” They had paid a lot and they wanted it to work, so they stayed. Here are the books like Nine Perfect Strangers where somebody pays to be fixed and then can’t bring themselves to leave:

The Short Version

• If you want the one where the host and the guest were friends first, read Perfect Modern Wife: an executive checks in to a wellness retreat to find a friend who has gone quiet, and the woman running it is their estranged best friend, now a famous trad wife influencer with a chore wheel. It is the only one here where the guest is there to get her friend out.
• If you want the closest match, read This Might Hurt: a wellness center on an island off Maine, run by a man his followers call the Teacher, where guests give up all outside contact as a condition of entry. Publishers Weekly recommends it to Nine Perfect Strangers readers by name.
• If you want the one where the fee and the contract are the horror, read The Centre: a secret language school that promises total fluency in ten days for twenty thousand dollars, and forbids almost all contact while you are there.
• If you want to laugh at the wellness industry rather than be frightened by it, read The Glow or Cult Classic: a burnt-out PR manager finds a barefoot guru’s farmhouse retreat on Instagram, and a woman keeps running into every ex-boyfriend she has ever had in Chinatown, which is not a coincidence.

How I Picked These

Having written a wellness retreat thriller myself, I’ve read a lot of them. Here are my three criteria for what makes a good one:

1. You have to have signed yourself up: Nobody on this list gets kidnapped. They enrolled, or took the job, or were raised inside it, and a person who walks out on day two has to admit the whole thing was a mistake. If you’ve ever stayed at a party you stopped enjoying because you paid for the Uber, you already know how this works on a person.
2. Somebody is promising to fix you: There’s always one person at the front of the room who is warm, certain, and somehow already knows you hate your job. Every boss who has ever run an offsite is working from the same playbook, with worse snacks.
3. The rules arrive one at a time: No eye contact for five days. Hand in your phone. Just one more treatment. Each rule is small enough to say yes to on its own. By the fifth one you’ve handed over your phone and your schedule, and you said yes to every single step. You should finish these books slightly annoyed at how reasonable the first rule sounded.

At a Glance

Nine wellness retreat thriller books and their nearest relatives, and what each one is doing differently.

What Are the Best Books Like Nine Perfect Strangers?

Nine, in three groups. One to four are about the program itself, the thing you sign up for. Five and six are about what it does to a body. Seven to nine are about the people who believe in it, which is the group that unsettles me most. They are grouped, not ranked.

Group one: the program.

1. Perfect Modern Wife by Kristen Van Nest (2025)

Read this if: it is here because the host and the guest were friends before the retreat, so leaving costs a friendship. You want a wellness retreat skewered as satire while still being creepy.

What you’re getting: A horror-comedy novella. Successful executive Audrey visits her old friend Jessica at a wellness retreat run by their estranged friend-turned-tradwife influencer McKinley, and she can’t help feeling something is off, especially since they won’t let her see Jessica until the retreat is over. Audrey expects organic smoothies and sunset selfies. Instead she finds McKinley crawling across the kitchen floor at 3 AM, hands raw and bleeding, chanting about being the perfect modern wife. Now optioned to become a movie.

Why Nine Perfect Strangers fans will like it: There is one rule: Audrey cannot see Jessica until the retreat is over. Every extra day she waits is a day she has agreed to be there. The bootcamp on McKinley’s farm is something women pay to attend, and the program has a chore wheel. Audrey stays because Jessica is somewhere inside that farmhouse and nobody will let her in. In The Centre it takes a twenty-thousand-dollar fee and a signed NDA to keep the guest from leaving, and here it takes a friend.

What readers say:

“Everything feels off. And they keep trying to encourage her to drink their special well water.” — Nikki B., Goodreads Reviewer.

“This was everything that I was looking for and enjoyed from the psychological thriller, it uses the cult-element perfectly to the storyline.” — Kat M, Goodreads Reviewer.

“If you are obsessed with stories and books like The Wicker Man, Stepford Wives, Midsommer, with the character banter like The Haunting then this book is calling your name!” — Megan Beech, Goodreads Reviewer.

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2. This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel (2022)

Read this if: it is here because giving up contact with everyone you know is a condition of entry, not something that happens to you later. You want the closest match on this page.

What you’re getting: The Wisewood Wellness & Therapy Center, an isolated island compound reached from Rockland, Maine, with a blizzard coming in to cut off travel back to the mainland. Publishers Weekly calls Wisewood “a life-sucking cult guided by a guy his acolytes call the Teacher.” It’s told by two sisters and a third narrator who, Kirkus says, “goes unidentified until the novel’s midpoint.”

Why Nine Perfect Strangers fans will like it: Publishers Weekly makes the recommendation itself: “Fans of Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers will want to check this out.” Kirkus says Wisewood “requires attendees to give up all connections, including contact with friends and family,” so by the time anyone on the outside gets worried, there is nobody left who can reach them. Take this one if you want the version where a blizzard closes the way back to the mainland.

Fair warning: Kirkus says “the genre-savvy will see the twists coming from miles away.” If you read a lot of these, read Wrobel for the compound rather than the reveal. The same review notes the backstory turns on an abusive father’s training regimen.

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3. The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi (2023)

Read this if: it is here because the stay is ten days you have already paid twenty thousand dollars for, and the scariest thing in the book is the NDA.

What you’re getting: A “super elite, super-secret” and, in Publishers Weekly‘s word, “super expensive” language school. Kirkus says it “promises total fluency in any language within 10 days, for a hefty fee, of course: $20,000,” and describes “a secluded retreat that follows a strict schedule and forbids almost all social contact in the service of achieving optimal results.” Anisa signs the nondisclosure agreement and goes.

Why Nine Perfect Strangers fans will like it: Ten days, a strict schedule, almost no talking to anyone. Tranquillum House sold the same ten days with a five-day silence attached. As Anisa learns more about the school’s methodology and its employees, Publishers Weekly says, “she fears she’s made a terrible mistake.”

Fair warning: Publishers Weekly says “the ending is a bit of a letdown,” and Kirkus thinks Siddiqi “could have done more to scrutinize Anisa’s own sources of privilege.” Both still recommend it.

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4. The Glow by Jessie Gaynor (2023)

Read this if: it is here because somebody tells her outright that the place might be a cult and she goes anyway. You want the funny one.

What you’re getting: FortPath, a weekend retreat at a dilapidated New Jersey farmhouse led by a barefoot woman named Cass, where according to Publishers Weekly the guests “spoke frankly about their bowels.” Jane is a burnt-out PR manager. She finds FortPath on Instagram, and she doesn’t stay a guest for long.

Why Nine Perfect Strangers fans will like it: According to Kirkus, “Despite warnings that it might be a cult,” she signs up. The same review credits Cass with “the charisma of a cult leader, but not enough of the drive,” which is a funnier and more recognizable problem than evil. So the woman in charge here can talk anyone into anything and then can’t be bothered to follow through. Wisewood in This Might Hurt has a plan for its guests. FortPath has a farmhouse and a woman with no shoes on.

Fair warning: Kirkus is blunt about the opening: “The first third of the book is a hokey slog, filled with every wellness cliche imaginable.” Publishers Weekly agrees the narrative “idles a bit too much in exposition and backstory mode.” Gaynor is writing satire, so nobody’s coming to rescue anybody.

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Group two: the body. Both of these are about what the treatments do to the person who takes them: in the first, a salesgirl learns “the extent to which her new employers will go to make their privileged clients happy” and in the second, clients chase their “Most Magnificent Self”.

5. Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang (2023)

Read this if: it is here because the salesgirl starts using the merchandise herself. You want the view from behind the counter instead of from the treatment table.

What you’re getting: Kirkus describes “a former pianist” who takes a job at what Publishers Weekly calls “a Goop-esque Holistik outlet, where she becomes one of a bevy of salesgirls, hocking everything from face creams to emotional support ducklings.” Her employers rename her Anna. She starts using the merchandise. Body horror, told straight.

Why Nine Perfect Strangers fans will like it: Publishers Weekly describes a young woman who “learns the secrets of a sinister wellness company,” and Kirkus names what she finds out: “the extent to which her new employers will go to make their privileged clients happy.” Huang tells it from the salesgirl’s side of the counter, so this is the one about who hands the treatments out.

Fair warning: the two reviews split on Huang, and the split is worth knowing before you buy. Publishers Weekly calls it “deeply unsettling.” Kirkus says “this debut falls short” and “moves too quickly to provide a satisfactory payoff on the many mysteries it lays out.”

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6. Rouge by Mona Awad (2023)

Read this if: it is here because each treatment is a small yes that makes the next one easier to agree to. You want the one that doesn’t play by realist rules.

What you’re getting: Mirabelle’s mother dies, and Mirabelle ends up at the spa her mother was spending money she did not have on. Kirkus calls the place “La Maison de Meduse, the home of the titular Rouge, which offers otherworldly spa treatments to clients in pursuit of their ‘Most Magnificent Self’.” Fairy-tale logic, and a mother who, in Publishers Weekly’s words, “had racked up thousands of dollars in debt” in her pursuit of smooth skin.

Why Nine Perfect Strangers fans will like it: Kirkus sums the premise as “A woman tangles with a cultlike spa,” and the recruitment line is the familiar one: Publishers Weekly has the staff “tell her that she’s the perfect candidate for their mysterious treatment.” PW describes Awad inventing “increasingly warped skin-care routines as Belle falls under Rouge’s spell: her face is electrified, her memories are manipulated.” Take it if you want the one where the treatments reach her memories.

Fair warning: Kirkus calls Mirabelle “a singularly unreliable narrator” and says you have to stay with her “throughout bouts of confusion and peril.” Publishers Weekly adds that “the narrative stretches on a bit too long.” If you need a floor plan and a timeline, this is not your book.

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Group three: the believers. The last three are told from inside the circle, by people who signed up.

7. Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst (2016)

Read this if: it is here because a family gives up its life in Washington, D.C., and moves to the guru’s camp before anybody sees his other side. You want the one that will actually upset you.

What you’re getting: Alexandra and her husband have two daughters, one of whom is autistic, and they’re out of options. So they move to a summer camp in rural New Hampshire for families facing similar struggles, run by a man Publishers Weekly describes as “an unorthodox child-development guru with a devoted grassroots following.” Kirkus calls Scott Bean a “maverick autism counselor” and says the family goes “off the grid.” Three viewpoints, one of them a child’s.

Why Nine Perfect Strangers fans will like it: According to Publishers Weekly, “as the veneer of Scott’s public persona wears off, and a more controlling, volatile side begins to show, all of Camp Harmony’s residents are forced to confront some harrowing truths about their situation.” The same review says the novel “explores family bonds, modern-day parenting, and the foundations of cult-like groups.” In This Might Hurt the guests arrive as strangers. The people who signed up here brought their children with them.

Fair warning: Kirkus frames the payoff as “inspiration and insight about parenting a child with autism,” so if you came to Parkhurst for a twist machine you’ll be reading a different book than the one you ordered. Publishers Weekly calls it “a series of conundrums with no easy answers.”

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8. Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle (2023)

Read this if: it is here because the narrator believes in the program and is proud of its record. You want the one where the believer is the one telling you the story.

What you’re getting: Neverton, Montana. Publishers Weekly describes a town that “is home to the Kingdom of the Pines, a Christian sect whose claim to fame is their conversion therapy program, Camp Damascus.” Rose Darling is autistic, devout, and proud of the camp’s record. Then she starts vomiting bugs at family dinner.

Why Nine Perfect Strangers fans will like it: Rose believes in Camp Damascus, and Publishers Weekly describes the slow discovery that “Rose’s parents and her so-called therapist are gaslighting her, a creeping sensation compounded by flashes of memory of a relationship with a woman,” and calls the whole thing “an eerie but empowering queer horror story.”

Fair warning: the content here is heavy and worth knowing about in advance. Conversion therapy, demonic apparitions, a murdered friend, and parents who are lying to their daughter. Publishers Weekly also warns that “The first act is an exercise in slowly mounting dread.” Kirkus hasn’t reviewed it, so everything above comes from Publishers Weekly.

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9. Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley (2022)

Read this if: it is here because she notices the reverence around the leader, decides it is ridiculous, and keeps turning up anyway. You want the one that is actually about your thirties.

What you’re getting: Lola keeps running into her ex-boyfriends in Chinatown. It is not a coincidence. Publishers Weekly describes “a secretive startup named Golconda run by their charming former boss, Clive Glenn,” and a routine where she “spends every evening having brief interactions with exes, then returning to Golconda for debriefing.” Kirkus says Clive is “using the free labor of his unquestioning acolytes to create a product that gives clients perfect emotional closure.”

Why Nine Perfect Strangers fans will like it: Publishers Weekly says “Lola balks at the cultlike reverence the others show for Clive.” She balks, and she comes back the next night. Kirkus says the book is “interrogating contemporary wellness culture,” and the free labor is the same thing I was talking about up top: Clive’s acolytes work for nothing. The guru in Harmony wants your whole family. Clive only wants Lola’s evenings, every one of them, and she keeps giving them to him.

Fair warning: you’re not getting a thriller. Nobody lives at Golconda, Lola goes home every night, and she is never held anywhere. Kirkus says as much: “The story is plenty engaging, but it’s Crosley’s analytical acumen and gift for the striking metaphor that really gives the book life.” Publishers Weekly calls the premise “fantastical.”

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Which One to Read Tonight

Three moods, three wellness retreat books, depending on what you actually want from the next few hours.

• You want the host to be someone she used to trust: Perfect Modern Wife. It’s the only one here where the woman running the retreat used to drink way too much tequila with the guest, and the only one where the guest is there to get a friend out.
• You want the island and the storm: This Might Hurt, and start it early, because once the blizzard closes in you won’t want to stop.
• You want to be amused rather than frightened: Cult Classic, which is the one you’ll quote at people.

If none of those three fits, my list of wellness cult thrillers covers the same industry from the cult end rather than the retreat end, and if McKinley’s half of this was the part you liked, I have a list of tradwife thrillers too.

FAQ: Books Like Nine Perfect Strangers

What Are the Best Books Like Nine Perfect Strangers?

These nine, in the order above: Perfect Modern Wife by Kristen Van Nest, This Might Hurt, The Centre, The Glow, Natural Beauty, Rouge, Harmony, Camp Damascus and Cult Classic. They are grouped by the program, the body and the believers, not ranked.

What Is Nine Perfect Strangers About?

Nine guests book a ten-day “Mind and Body Total Transformation Retreat” at Tranquillum House, a secluded resort in the Australian bush. According to Publishers Weekly, what they have not reckoned on is the director, “messianic but precariously stable,” whose “secret agenda could be dangerous to their health.” According to Kirkus, on arrival the guests are given blood tests and told to observe a five-day silence, and they stay.

What Are the Best Wellness Retreat Thriller Books?

This Might Hurt and The Centre are the two closest to Nine Perfect Strangers, because both put a guest inside a program that cuts off contact with the outside world. Publishers Weekly recommends the first to Nine Perfect Strangers readers by name. Perfect Modern Wife is the one on this page where the retreat is run by someone the guest used to know, so leaving means walking out on a friend.

Which Books Set at a Wellness Retreat Are Actually About a Cult?

Several of them, and the reviews say so themselves. Publishers Weekly calls Wisewood in This Might Hurt “a life-sucking cult guided by a guy his acolytes call the Teacher”; Kirkus sums Rouge as “A woman tangles with a cultlike spa”; and Publishers Weekly says Harmony explores “the foundations of cult-like groups.” The books set at a wellness retreat that stop short of that, like The Glow, are satires about the industry instead. Perfect Modern Wife is openly one: the program has a chore wheel, the women pay to attend, and there is one rule: Audrey cannot see Jessica until the retreat is over.

What Are the Best Wellness Retreat Books for a Book Club?

Harmony and The Centre, because both end without telling you who was right. Publishers Weekly calls the first “a series of conundrums with no easy answers,” and Kirkus says the second has “its finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary social discourse.” Those are the two that’ll keep a room talking past the wine.

Which One Is the Hardest to Read?

Camp Damascus, which is built on a sect’s conversion therapy program and a narrator whose own parents are lying to her. Publishers Weekly describes a “creeping sensation” of being gaslit by “Rose’s parents and her so-called therapist.” Natural Beauty is the one where the horror is done to a body.

Which Wellness Retreat Book Is About Getting a Friend Out?

Perfect Modern Wife by Kristen Van Nest is the one where the guest is there for a friend, not for herself. Audrey goes because Jessica signed up and hasn’t been seen since, and there is one rule: Audrey cannot see Jessica until the retreat is over. It’s the pick over The Glow if you want a rescue, and the host here is an old friend, which no other retreat on this page has. As Goodreads reviewer Heather put it: “You see how easy it is to get pulled in especially when the world around you rewards perfection and punishes independence.”

Are Any of These Actually Funny?

Two of them are comedies first. Publishers Weekly calls The Glow “a witty send-up of wellness culture and the perils of transforming people into brands,” and Publishers Weekly calls Cult Classic “a witty and fantastical story of dating and experimental psychology.” Read either one if the jokes were your favorite part of Nine Perfect Strangers.

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