SOLVED. YA Sci Fi. Boy is part of experiment to see how human-like robots interact with real humans. Spoilers in comments. [s]

[Joanna]

I read this book between 1998 and 2000. I think it would have been published within 10 years of then.

I read the book as a 10 year old, although it might be written more for middle schoolers. The main character is a pre-teen/teenage boy who becomes part of an experiment to see how human-like robots interact with real humans. The boy spends multiple hours with a family of these robots for many days, but at night the robots are turned off (they think they're just going to bed). !!! Major spoiler below ............




Toward the end of the book, the boy realizes that he is actually also one of these robots. Super cool book. Thanks for the help!

The reading level and style is similar to The Giver and The Last Book in the Universe. Along those lines of young adult science fiction.

[Becca]

Could it be A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair by Nicholas Fisk? They're clones, not robots, but otherwise it's very much like what you describe (including the twist ending - the protagonist Brin thinks he is simply observing the clones he lives with but at the end finds out he is one himself). They are even 'switched off' at night:

The Scenario never changed: at nine o’clock, Brian and Mavis were programmed to become tired. Just after nine, they left the room with Mrs Mossop’s words following them: ‘Good night and sweet repose, half the bed and all the clothes.’ [...]
And then Mavis and Brian were going and Mrs Mossop was gone—put back in their boxes behind the dresser, gone to limbo until the Scenario started again the next day and the players re-enacted their little play on their little stage.
There was nowhere else for them to go, of course. No bathroom and bedroom upstairs, no father and mother. The rest of the house and its people did not exist except in their minds.
Only Blackie the cat ‘existed’ for twenty-four hours a day. Like Brin, he lived inside and outside the Scenario.

Here's the Google Books preview: https://www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

[Joanna]

Yes!!!!! That’s it! I’m so exited you figured it out and commented with that info! I’m excited to read it again 20 years later! Thank you!!!!