Book Review: Playing Nice

A parent's worst nightmare becomes fodder for thrills in J. P. Delaney's latest psychological suspenser Playing Nice. What happens when you find out your child isn't yours at all, and was switched with another baby during childbirth? If you were the Rileys and Lamberts, who discover, to their shock, the sons they've been raising for the past two years were accidentally swapped in an understaffed hospital, you play nice to one another, fostering a amicable relationship in hopes of building an unconventional family. But their joint decision to sue the hospital for negligence leads to troubling revelations, and everyone suddenly isn't what they seem to be. Delaney spices the narrative with a crackling pace and a pool of interesting characters, unmasking their ulterior motives and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that casts the whole story in new light — and the swap turns out to be the tip of a very cold, very massive iceberg. Domestic suspense can't get any more unsettling.