The Substitute

Author : Skye Arden
Published : September 30, 2025
Print length : 592 pages

Blurb:
She was hired to play the role of a dead girl named Lily. Now she’s not so sure Lily ever existed.
Celia James has nothing left—no home, no career, no future. So when a wealthy couple hires her to impersonate their late daughter for “therapeutic closure,” she says yes. It’s strange, sure. But it’s just acting… isn’t it?
The Evers estate is beautiful, remote, and wrong in ways she can’t explain. Evelyn Evers clings to her with unsettling devotion. Dr. Martin Evers watches like a case study. And the house itself thrums with the memory of a girl who never quite left.
As Celia slips into Lily’s world—her voice, her memories, her room—something begins to shift. She dreams things she shouldn’t know. Recites facts she was never told. And when she tries to leave, the house—like the truth—won’t let her.
Trapped in a maze of lies and buried memories, cracks form in her identity. Now one terrifying question won’t go away:
If Lily never really died… then who is Celia?