Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an advanced copy of "The Sleepover" by Carol Wyer in exchange for an honest review.

I was intrigued by the premise of the novel: "Roxy had a secret. Now she’s gone. Then Roxy’s mother Cathy disappears. When Cathy’s body is discovered close to where her daughter was found, Natalie is forced to face the grim fact that the killer is just getting started. She is troubled by the reaction of Roxy’s brother Seth to the tragedies and when his alibi falls through she brings him in for questioning, certain she is making headway.

But while Seth is in custody, one of Roxy’s school friends is found murdered and Natalie knows she must cast her net wider. Things take a more sinister turn when Ellie vanishes, her mobile phone switched off. What is Ellie hiding about the night Roxy died that could put her in terrible danger? And can Natalie work it out before another innocent life is taken? "

I struggled with the first few chapters but I am so glad I stuck with "The Sleepover" by Carol Wyer. There was plenty of suspense, mystery, twists, and turns to keep me on my toes.

I didn't love all of the subplots, especially the one between Natalie and her husband. Perhaps that's a subplot that would be more interesting if I had read the previous books in the series. I'll certainly be checking them out along with any future stories in the Detective Natalie Wood series.

Another book where I like how the characters are progressing but found the story a bit predictable and struggled with it. I do like the books though and will continue to read this series #NetGalley#TheSleepover

The Detective Natalie Ward crime thriller series is a favorite of mine. I love how detailed the cases usually are. In this case, Roxy is found dead in a house that burned down. This was one case that was simply hard to crack. Roxy had no business being in that house. She has no connection with the owners of the house and lived in a totally different neighborhood. The premise had me scratching my head trying to figure it out.

The investigation was captivating and tense. Detective Natalie and her team started out in the dark but as always, pieces of the puzzle soon started falling into place. There were no dull moments since my mind was working fast as I tried to guess the culprit. With this series, I never really have any definite suspects. I just suspect whoever the detectives suspect as I follow the evidence with them. The unpredictability is one of my favorite things about these books.

I also enjoyed the character development. I like Detective Natalie and the fact that she is a wife and mom to 2 kids. She does remind me a lot of my mom who worked as a cop until her retirement. Her characterization is so relatable hence making her story even more enjoyable to read. I liked experiencing her vulnerability at home and toughness at work. The support characters are equally well developed, especially her family and team at work.

With stellar writing, a tough case to crack and an unpredictable outcome, this was an enjoyable, fast-paced, gripping read. I recommend the series to fans of crime thrillers.

Carol wyer is one of my fav authors and I always get excited to get my hands on her newest work. I love her Natalie Ward series...this book was awesome. Can’t wait for book 5.

This is the 4th instalment from the Detective Natalie Ward series. I have previously read and loved the previous books and this latest is just as good. In all honesty it could be read as a stand-alone book but I do think you miss out on a bit of the history of the characters plus the previous titles are too good to be missed !!

A fire at a residential property starts off a series of events that will change the lives of several families. Detective Natalie Ward is called to attend a house fire where a body is found in the remains of the house. The owners were out at the time of the fire and deny all knowledge of knowing the person who died in their house. The remains are those of a local teenager who was meant to be sleeping over at a friends house and had no links to the house where she was found. The next day Natalie receives a call to say that the teenagers mother has gone missing. Are the two linked ? Or had the mother taken herself away to get some space ?

Time is ticking and Natalie is under pressure to solve the case but she is also having to deal with distractions from home. Will she discover the truth before anyone else comes to harm ?

This is a great mystery thriller and I absolutely love Detective Natalie Ward, as well as her colleagues. If you haven’t read the previous books in the series then you are really missing out !! Can’t wait for book five in the series !!

Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley for a digital copy of this book.

Thorough enjoyed the other books in this series and this latest one did not disappoint.
Lots of sub plots to keep you intrigued & I enjoyed the ongoing storyline too.
Already looking forward to the next adventures.

DI Natalie Ward and her team at Samford HQ have their hands full! A house fire, determined to be arson, leads to discovery of the incinerated body of 14-year-old Roxy Curtis. What was the young teenager doing in a Victorian mansion owned by two brothers who are high-flying nightclub owners? The brothers claim they have never met Roxy and don't know how she got into their secured home. Roxy had told her mom, Cathy, that she was spending the night at her best friend Ellie's house. When questioned, Ellie isn't exactly truthful nor are any of the other people who are interviewed in this very complicated case that is frustrating Natalie, DS Lucy Carmichael, PC Ian Jarvis, and DS Murray Anderson. More suspicious deaths follow and Natalie is convinced that if she can get to the bottom of all the secrets and lies it will lead them to the killer. NO SPOILERS.

There is a lot going on in this detective mystery and also in the personal lives of the team at Samford. Natalie is still dealing with her husband, David, and trying to work through the issues in their marriage. Lucy is a bit nervous about the upcoming birth of the baby with her partner. Ian can't make up his mind about whether or not to chuck the police job to make it work with Scarlett. And then there's still the ongoing tension between Natalie and head of Forensics, Mike Sullivan -- who happens to be David's best friend. (Ah, yes, a romantic triangle and one I had really hoped would go no further.) So lots of domestic turmoil and a surfeit of teenage rebellion and angst. I always like to test myself to see if I can guess the outcome and solve the case before Natalie does and I won't say who won this round.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for this e-book ARC to read and review. I will continue to follow this enjoyable series.

A pacey exciting thriller that draws you in and holds you entranced to the last page. I enjoyed the twists and turns that led to an explosive ending.

I can't wait for the next book in the series.

Lies, lies, lies. Everyone in this story has secrets and is holding back something. Natalie and her team desperately wants to solve the murder of 14 years old Roxy. Two of the suspects are two brothers, owning a nightclub and the house Roxy was found in. But there are so many things not adding up and Natalie really has to up her game.
I love this series and highly recommend everyone to give it a try. This are the kind of book , once started it's impossible to stop reading and put the book down. Can't wait for more books in this series.

# The Sleepover # Netgally
Wow what a brilliant book once again from Carol Wyer. Oh gosh we're to start. I literally one I started this book could not put it down. Natalie and her team once again. Go I'll put to find out what Roxy was doing in the house of the two brothers, who run the nightclub Extravaganza. This takes them on a journey full of so many twist and turns that have you glued to the book. With each twist it appeared to create further problems than it resolves, Natalie knows people are lying to her. But how to get to the truth is really difficult..everyone has coming to hide. Will she eventually get to the truth of NOT. To make matters worse Natalie has trouble in her home life too. She's recently found out her husband had lied to her again. She can not forgive him best of if ever. She's also found her son Josh is not his normal self. So Natalie finds herself under a lot of pressure with the case and family life. Will Natalie get through both. Having also push the feelings she has for Mike who's her husbands best friend. Not only that Mike is also on Natalies team , a police officer that works with her. You have to read this book its intense with so much going off with the case and her private life. It's one hell of a fead. That no matter how much you want to put this book down you can not..........I will be honest I was not feeling well when reading this book. Did to cancer. Yet noting and I mean nothing could make me it the book down. No matter how ill I was feeling. Carol Wyer,s books are addictive reads. She is such a brilliant and extremely powerful author. I can not recognise books enkugh. I say this every single time out of pure belief this is by far the best one yet. I can not wait for the next instalment of the
Detective Natalie Ward series. Please if you really enjoy reading you can not afford to miss this book. It's awesome,brilliant, amszinv, fantastic, book

How many times do we need to say it; don’t lie to your parents!!! No, make it ‘don’t lie to anyone!’ I know, easier said than done, as shown in The Sleepover!

How harmful can lies be? I felt it was the focus of the novel. The author brilliantly mixes lies from the investigation with lies from Natalie’s personal life, allowing the reader to truly feel the impact of the aftermath of secrets. I really enjoy how Natalie’s family life ‘gets in the way’ or rather mirrors the problems she faces at work. It gives the series a unique angle that I am always hungry for.

One dead teenager, lots of suspects. When tragedy struck again, it only made the haystack bigger and the needle smaller! I love police procedurals for the brain work it requires and the puzzle-solving. I love to hate the frustration of a list of suspects. Often, this list is sketchy. In The Sleepover, the list is overflowing with names! It is just as frustrating! I felt like the team (and myself) were swimming in muddy waters, and each character around Roxy, the poor victim, seems to have the motive and the means to have carried out the … incident.

I say incident because nothing is straightforward in this book. Roxy’s death is wrapped in mystery, and everyone is blowing smoke around events preceding and following her death, from her own family to seemingly perfect strangers belonging to the night life.

When Roxy’s mother dies in suspicious circumstances and another young teenager is found lifeless, Natalie and her team begin to suspect the case is much more complicated than they originally thought. I had this image of Roxy glued in the middle of a spider’s web, before being joined by others. The wider the spider web, the darker the novel! Everyone else buzzes like mosquitoes on a summer night, one minute high on my suspects’ list, the next falling down to leave room for another name to wave a red flag. I was mad at everyone for keeping their mouth shut, for letting Roxy down, for just messing with my head!

It was both painful and infuriating to see how people close to you can be so far away when you are stuck in your own bubble. Can we really be close to someone? Can we actually know anyone?

I had an idea of who was behind this whole tragedy, but getting all the answers felt extremely satisfactory. The plot is weaved carefully so I could never get a rest and think ‘I’ve got it all figured out!’
It is easy to get engrossed in this cat and mouse game, and Natalie Ward is a good character to fight demons, those of others, and her own!

Read all of my reviews at https://brainfartsandbooks.wordpress.com

I am becoming a big fan of Carol Wyer's books and thus I was very excited to receive a copy of her new book The Sleepover. Roxy is a fourteen-year-old girl growing up with her Mom, Stepdad, and two older brothers. One day Roxy disappears only to be found in a house as a burned victim. Roxy's death opens up a series of questions for Detective Natalie Ward who has children of her own. What was a fourteen-year-old doing in a house owned by two men and why is it the men don't know who Roxy even is. This story is perplexing through and through but as questions are answered and Roxy's Mom is also found dead, the police realize that they are dealing with something, or rather someone, sinister and with what must be a large motive. This story will keep your eyes glued to the page and make you wonder what could be going on. A must-read for fans of domestic mystery and suspense.

Thank you to Netgalley, Carol Wyer, and Bookouture for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 5 engaging stars

This is the fourth book in Carol Wyer’s, “Detective Natalie Ward” series. Each subsequent book in the series just keeps getting better and better. I haven’t read the first book in the series yet, but I gave four stars to the second book, “Last Lullaby”, and five stars to book three in the series, “The Dare”. I was so excited to see that a fourth book was being released. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Once again Carol Wyer ratcheted up the plot complexity another notch. I’m gladly giving this book five bright engaging stars.

The book opens with Roxie Curtis waving to her Mom through the back gate as she leaves for a sleepover at her best friend Ellie’s house. Then we are taken to the scene of a suspected arson of a large Victorian house in a swanky part of town. The house belongs to two brothers who recently moved to town. They bought an old cattle sales market building and converted it to a nightclub. This did not earn them the Welcome Wagon treatment when they moved to their Victorian mansion. They were not well liked or well known to their neighbors.

Detective Natalie Ward and her team are called in when a body is found in the entertainment room in the charred remains of the house. The body is finally identified as 14 year-old Roxie. From there the plot rockets off. There are lots of amazing and unforeseen twists and turns in this expert police procedural that left me unwilling to set the book down. I had plenty of guesses about the identity of the perpetrator, but none of them were correct. What a wonderful thing to say about a mystery.

I really enjoy getting to know each of the police team members better book by book in this series. Natalie continues to struggle with work/life balance and regaining trust with her husband about his gambling addiction. Those feel like real life problems that would leave me feeling overwhelmed. I like that the book is not simply about the current murder. As in every other installment in this series, getting to know the recurring characters better makes each reading experience richer. I’m tipping my hat once again to Carol Wyer for an excellent mystery! In my review of “The Dare” I think I exhorted Ms. Wyer to “Write Faster!” That is again my plea after finishing “The Sleepover”.

‘Thank-You’ to NetGalley; the publisher, Bookouture; and the author, Carol Wyer; for providing a free e-ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the fourth in the series of books featuring Natalie Ward. I have read & enjoyed the previous ones so I was looking forward to this one.

When Roxy says she is going to stay at her friends for the night, Carol is not worried. As their conversation seems to have brought to an end the row they had been having so cheerfully sees her go. So how did Roxy end up dead in a burning house?

Natalie & her team first have first to identify the body & then try to work out how this girl ended up in the luxury home of two rich nightclub owning brothers Roxy's family are devastated. Her stepfather tries to support Carol, while her brothers cope in their own way.

Before long there are more deaths & the team have to solve the crime. At the same time Natalie struggles with her home life and the realisation that her marriage is in deep trouble.

This was an enjoyable read. I did half guess the murderer, but not the reasons behind it. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

OH MY GOOD GOD! WHAT THE FRIED EGGS DID I JUST READ?!?!?!

Can I just tell you all to go and buy 'The Sleepover' like, right this second? Just when I thought that Carol Wyer couldn't get any better, she goes and knocks the ball WAY out of the park by writing a novel which made me want to go and hide out on a cloud with Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony! Honestly! If you're after suspense, this book has it. If you're after a twisted read that is full of red herrings, dead ends, and uncertainty - this book has it. If you're after a main character who knows how to kick ass whilst still being a well respected Detective, then Natalie Ward is your gal. If you're after a book which leaves you wanting more and shouting 'NOOOO' when the book ends, then 'The Sleepover' should definitely be your next read.

Roxy told her mum that she was going for a sleepover; a sleepover which her friend knew nothing about. Why did Roxy lie? Where did she go? When the police are called to a situation over the other side of town, Roxy's whereabouts are confirmed, however not in a good way. Detective Natalie Ward and her team are on the case, but if they thought that it would just stop with Roxy, they are about to be seriously mistaken.

There are quite a few cactus characters in this book! The type of characters who, if they were on Tinder, would even have rats swiping left instead of right. Why couldn't they just do as they're bloody told?!

As I've already said, I thought 'The Sleepover' was a bloody awesome read. I had an inkling who was 'it' so to speak, but seeing as the author likes to stick red herrings in her books and make her readers feel as though they're losing the plot, I wasn't entirely convinced by my train of thought.

Yes, I kicked myself when I appeared to be right! That never happens! Seriously though, the entire book was very cleverly thought out, and as much as I jest about losing the plot, the psychological side to the storyline was brilliant! Somewhat unnerving mind!

Natalie Ward has come up trumps once again and I cannot WAIT to see what is in store for her next! Carol Wyer is an absolute genius who has a mind I can only guess as to what the heck goes on in it - holy cheeseballs my nerves are fried!

An outstanding, twisted novel that had me shouting 'OH MY FUDGING GOODNESS' more times than I could count.

One word : M I N D B L O W I N G !!!

I LOVE that series, I LOVE that author! Every book from Carol I think "wow this one is my favorite", so again, even though they're all brilliant I think this one might be my favorite... until the next one... of course...

Well written, like always really good storyline with strong characters, interesting, captivating, intriguing, it keeps you guessing until the end.
Well developed, good pace, never boring! The attention to details, police procedural... everything PERFECT !

Carol Wyer is a genius!

I can't wait to read the next one!

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC of this book. This is my honest review. All opinions are my own.

This is the second book I have read in the Detective Natalie Ward series. It is an excellent police procedural and crime fiction novel. Fused with family drama, the characters are believable and complex, they have flaws and secrets, which make them realistic.

The fast-paced plot is suspenseful, building with each new character, and incident. The initial case appears normal, straightforward, but it isn't, and as the crimes compound, so do the suspects and possible reasons. The twists are clever and keep you guessing, and there are plenty of heartstopping moments.

The urban setting is authentic and grounds the events that occur, making you believe they could happen. The story doesn't lose sight of the human element and there is plenty of poignant emotion in this book.

The police team is what makes these stories resonate. They all have different personalities, problems and personal lives, but they are a team. They act, and think as one entity, each person in the team matters, they care, cover for and criticise each other and this makes them believable.

The ending demonstrates the power of careful detective work, as the web of lies and secrets are exposed, and the antagonist is finally revealed. I did work it out but changed my mind several times because of the wide cast of suspects and the plot's many twists.

A well thought out police procedural with a complex, dynamic detective team, and a clever twisty plot, which gives the reader a believable, emotional story.

I received a copy of this book from Bookouture via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

The fourth book in the Detective Natalie Ward series by Carol Wyer. In The Sleepover, Natalie and her team investigate the mysterious death of Roxy, a fourteen-year-old girl. Roxy’s remains were found in the burned home of two brothers, who seem to have no connection to Roxy. The team questions everyone in Roxy’s life, and it seems everyone is keeping secrets.

The mystery is intriguing and not easy to figure out. I love a crime novel that keeps me guessing as to who is behind the crime, and this one delivers on that. The characters are complex and captivating. I enjoy how this series blends the personal and professional lives of Natalie and her team. It makes the characters more real.

This book could be read as a standalone, but I recommend starting with book 1, The Birthday. The crime that the team investigates is different for each book, but the personal dramas in the team members lives continues.

A fantastic crime series. I highly recommend this series to fans of police procedurals. Gritty, complex, and compelling.

I received a free digital copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Sleepover by Carol Wyer is the 4th book in the Detective Natalie Ward mystery series, and my first book by this author. Wow, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to going back and the reading the other books in the series. The Sleepover has a well developed plot and characters. This book had twists and turns to keep me reading until the last page. I highly recommend this book, if you enjoy a good police procedural.

I reviewed a digital arc provided by NetGalley and the publisher. Thank you.

Fourteen year old Roxy told her mum she was going to sleep over at her best friend Ellie’s house. Ellie practically lives next door, so what could go wrong, right?

When Roxy turns up dead in a burning house in a well off part of town, it’s clear a lot can go wrong and little white lies can get you in a heap of trouble.

What is Roxy doing there in the first place, and how did she end up dead? What is her connection with the owners of this beautiful mansion? Her mother is not telling Natalie everything and Ellie refuses to talk.

Detective Natalie Ward is on the case and she will not stop her investigation until she has her answers. But shortly after Roxy’s death, her mother Cathy goes missing. Only to turn up dead as well. Are these killings connected? Or are they just a morbid coincidence?

Natalie’s investigation takes her to the wealthiest and poorest parts of town, as she tries to figure out the connection. When a teenage boy ends up dead as well it becomes an even greater race against the clock to find the responsible parties.

This is book 4 in the Detective Natalie Ward series. I haven’t read any of the previous books (yet) so I wondered if this instalment was readable without having read the previous ones. It passed the test with flying colours. It’s perfectly readable as a standalone book.

Carol Wyer did a great job in creating a book that has that “series” feel to it without loosing the possibility for readers to jump right in with book 4 as a standalone book.

The characters are dimensional and I was torn between liking them and feeling sorry for them on one page and disliking them the next. They are not just all good or all bad, just like people in real life. Which makes for a very appealing read.

It’s a gripping story, with a lot of suspects but the reveal of the actual killer still surprised me. Sometimes a lot of suspects can make a book feel cluttered and side tracked. Yet the amount of suspects here seemed fitting for this book.

While Natalie conducts her investigation she also has to keep her private life on track. She struggles in her marriage and her relationship with her children is far from perfect. It’s nice to see a detective with a private life in books. It makes them feel more human and easier to connect and relate to.

Overall Carol Wyer wrote a wonderful book that will appeal to a lot of readers who enjoy the crime thriller genre.