In this hypnotic literary debut, a young couple is recruited by their magnetic boarding school headmaster to assist in a controversial sleep study, revealing the slippery nature of trust-and the immense power of our dreams. Sylvie is attending boarding school in Northern California when she falls for Gabe, a fellow student whose mischievousness and insatiable curiosity make him Sylvie's polar opposite. When he leaves school with no explanation, Sylvie is too blindsided and heartbroken to investigate, but she is never fully able to move on. Years later, Sylvie is living a new life in college when Gabe comes to find her, and the reasons behind his disappearance begin to emerge. Gabe has become an assistant to Dr. Adrian Keller, their old headmaster, known for his innovative research in the field of lucid dreaming. Keller has been performing experiments on people who suffer from debilitating sleep disorders, training them to recognize when they are dreaming and to become active participants in their sleep worlds. In doing so, he hopes to endow them with much-needed self-knowledge-and the capacity for intervention. Cautious but elated to be reunited with Gabe, Sylvie signs on to help with the study. But when patient studies go dangerously awry and former participants spiral out of control, even Sylvie begins to lose her grip on reality. What if our sleeping selves are somehow more real, she wonders, than who we are in waking life? Can she really trust Gabe? If Gabe had to choose, would his loyalty lie with her or Keller? That's when she finds a hidden file in Keller's office. Suddenly, all of the unanswered questions and irreconcilable moments shift into place. As she struggles to navigate the hazy, permeable boundaries between what is real and what isn't, who can be trusted and who cannot, Sylvie also faces surprising developments in herself: an unexpected infatuation, growing paranoia, and a new sense of rebellion.