After a seemingly perfect "playdate swap" with another family, a mother brings her son home and realizes, with chilling certainty, that the boy sleeping in his bed is not her child. What if your greatest fear wasn't losing your child, but getting the wrong one back? Sue Miller has finally achieved the perfect life. A beautiful new home in an affluent suburb, a successful career, and a loving family with her husband, David, and their sweet, six-year-old son, Leo. Desperate to help Leo make friends, she’s thrilled when he instantly connects with Jax, the son of their picture-perfect neighbors, Mark and Olivia Sterling. The families arrange a simple sleepover swap: Leo will stay at the Sterlings’ on Friday, and Jax will come to Sue’s on Saturday. It seems like the perfect arrangement. But when Sue brings Leo home on Sunday, a chilling unease settles in her gut. He’s quiet. He refuses his favorite foods. He calls her “Sue” instead of “Mommy.” He looks exactly like her son, but every instinct screams that the boy wearing her son’s face is an imposter. Her husband dismisses it as sleepover exhaustion. The Sterlings, with their flawless smiles and sympathetic tones, suggest she’s projecting her past struggles with anxiety. Even her own sister urges her to get some rest. Isolated and gaslit, Sue’s certainty hardens into a terrifying reality: this is not her child. Armed with nothing but a mother’s ferocious love and her own keen eye as a designer, Sue begins a desperate investigation. She uncovers a single, baffling clue—a strange, hand-carved wooden bird that doesn’t belong to Leo. Using her skills to analyze photos, she makes a horrifying discovery: the boy in her house is not just a lookalike, but a surgically precise doppelgänger. As Sue digs deeper, she uncovers a link to David’s high-stakes work in biotech. He unknowingly discovered a fatal flaw in a multi-billion dollar product, and the powerful corporation behind it will stop at nothing to silence him. The sleepover swap was no accident; it was a meticulously planned operation to replace her family. The real Leo is a hostage, and the imposter is there to ensure David’s cooperation. Now, Sue must outmaneuver the ruthless operatives across the street and expose a conspiracy that reaches far beyond her quiet street. Pushed to her breaking point, she can trust no one—not her neighbors, not her friends, and not even the husband who thinks she’s losing her mind. To get her son back, she must become the one thing they never anticipated: a mother with nothing left to lose. A propulsive, heart-pounding thriller in the vein of The Silent Patient and The Push, THE SLEEPOVER taps into every parent’s deepest fear, exploring the dark side of suburbia and the unbreakable ferocity of a mother’s love. You’ll be asking one question long after you turn the final page: How well do you really know the people you trust?
