Oh my this started out like such a laid back easy read and then turned into a wild ride with twists and turns. They were the best of childhood friends and now are estranged and a body is found. I always love a good book about friends with a secret. This was fast paced, and I did not want to put it down and was totally annoyed when life got in the way and made me.

I love when a thriller is written in a style that is easy to read. While maybe it was me, but I did find myself confusing the characters a little if I had to put the book down in the middle of the chapter, so I would pay a little extra attention to this as you read. I did not have best friends quite like this but did have a group of great girlfriends and this reminded me of those days. Which was a nice bonus since those days are very far behind me.

I did predict a few of the twists, but I am a little good at that and by no means all of them. Told in the present and while the girls were in high school and told at times from all of their points of view, you get a good look into what occurred to lead them to today’s body.

If you are a fan of best of bud friendship that has gone awry, you should pick this one up.

I loved the premise of this book, because it's the type of book I love: 4 best friends and a story that jumps from the past to the present as well as between different POVs. What's not to like?

The good: I really did enjoy the back and forth and the wondering of what happened in the past, what secrets were kept, and who exactly is doing the stalking in the present day. I started to kind of figure out a small aspect of the novel about halfway through, but this didn't at all ruin the ending to me, which still came as a surprise.

The bad: I felt like the characters were underdeveloped. Although I enjoyed all the different personalities, I couldn't help but feel that I wanted more from them. The chapters were relatively short and I felt that possibly there could have been more to add to each of the characters' growth and development as the story moved on.

Overall: I still thoroughly enjoyed the story and, like I said, still found the ending surprising.

Another quick and fun read is The Slumber Party by Shannon Hollinger. I received it from Bookouture via Netgalley and it is out now.

In the past, we follow four friends who share everything together and will go through fire for each other. Present day, we follow three friends because one of them died when they were younger and they kept it a secret. Except, the secret us about to come out and their lives will be changed forever.

This was a great and fun read. It is an interesting concept and it's been executed quite well. The characters are worked out enough to get to know them to understand where their behaviour is coming from. The story itself is not that difficult to see through but still fun to read.

4/5⭐

4.5⭐️
If you like Pretty Little Liars, you’ll like this. From the outside, it seems like these 4 girls are best friends, but each of them have secrets they are hiding. I loved all the twists and turns and I found myself never wanting to put this book down. I don’t always love when there’s past/present timelines but I think it worked really well in this story. This wasn’t the most well written book I’ve ever read but the story and plot made up for it.

Pretty Little Liars but messier, this book had me hooked from the start and didn’t let go until the end. High school drama, murder, and secrets upon secrets this book has it all. I loved the multiple POV’s and duel timelines adding the suspense to what happened on prom night. All the characters are unlikeable and have their own secrets and you get to see just how far they would go to keep them hidden. I do think it could’ve been a little shorter at times or at least more to the point. I also did enjoy that it touched on mental health without being super direct about it. Overall, I highly enjoyed this fact paced, thriller and recommend it to anyone who likes Pretty Little Liars.

I enjoyed The Slumber Party by Shannon Hollinger. I have read another book by this author before and knew that I really like the writing style and the suspense. This book had me on the edge of my seat and I especially liked the ending.

I have read a lot of books with this same sort of plot formula... where estranged best friends have a mysterious past that comes back to haunt them. For me, this book was definitely easy to read. However, the ending was somewhat predictable. The words still glued me to the book, and I enjoyed most of the characters. I also loved that it brought me back to when I used to have sleepovers with friends... they never turned out quite like this though.

Read if you like:
multiple POVs
interpersonal conflict
dual timelines

Buckle your seats, this is going to be a twisty ride!

Four friends+ one slumber party= a HUGE Nightmare!

There are secrets and twists galore in this gripping book about friendship, secrets, and deception.

Liz was the girl next door, Amy dreamed of singing in Hollywood, Sami was quiet and clever, Mo was the protective leader. They were best friends, swore to always be there, fiends for life, until one devastating night changed everything.

Liz received a letter saying “I’m back. Did you miss me?” . Her past has come calling.... Thus begins her nightmare. This is only the beginning......

This was a twist filled book full of secrets and toxic friendships. What happened all those nights ago has shaped lives and changed personalities. I did not see many of the twists or reveals coming. There are quite a few shocks along the way and Hollinger kept me on my toes the entire time.

3⭐️

Liz and Sami were best friends since they were children, doing everything together. They met cousins Amy and Mo who looked near identical to the point that everyone thought they were sisters while in elementary school. From then on the 4 girls were inseparable, spending most of their time in an abandoned stone structure begin Mo’s house. That is until prom night, when one of them tragically dies. They don’t tell anyone about the death, though, and just bury her in the woods.

Ten years later, Liz finds a mysterious letter left on her car saying “I’m back. Did you miss me?She could recognize the handwriting anywhere and their mistakes have come back from the dead to haunt them.

I love stories where a group of friends do something horrific, never speak of it and go they’re separate ways for years and then have to come back together because their crime might have been uncovered. I like the different POV’s and time shifts and appreciate the short chapters as it makes the story go faster.

There wasn’t a single likable character. None of them were very deep and none of their actions very sympathetic. Multiple people had affairs with another friends father, one cousin posed as the other to have tons of sex with different boys across the school, and they all lied about their friend dying. Most of the twists were also pretty predictable. If you spend so much time talking about how similar someone looks to someone else, it’s not a surprise when they are more related than originally thought.

This was a fairly quick, easy read and was still enjoying enough to keep my attention regardless the flaws.

Thank you Netgalley and Bookouture for providing this ARC to me!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

There's something about the tried-and-true thriller plots that really make me happy, especially when the author adds in some smaller plot twists that throw you off from what you thought you knew was going to happen. This was a really good book. I love anything with an unreliable narrator, and this was no exception. This was a relatively fast read and was fast-paced and enjoyable. The switching of narrators and timelines worked really well to keep the story moving and very entertaining. I would definitely recommend this book to other thriller lovers!

My second book by Shannon Hollinger and I can’t wait to read more! I absolutely love her writing style. I was hooked from the very beginning. Crazy secrets, lies and of course reveals. Such brilliant characters that I was just totally invested the entire time. Highly recommend
Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book

Someone died and someone is a killer. Finding out who died and who killed who is the whole motive of this book, which was new for me and I really enjoyed trying to figure it all out.

While I enjoyed the storyline, the multiple POV was extremely hard to keep up with and trying to remember who was who when telling their version of events, due to the back and forth with the past and present. There seemed like so much was going on but I understood it was to help build up the tension of the story.

There are multiple twists and turns which I absolutely 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗗! It kept me wanting more!

The characters were extremely interesting, each having their own deep dark secrets, even from each other that you wouldn’t have seen coming.

Enjoyed this one so much! Super fast paced and a page Turner. I would highly recommend to read this one!

I really enjoyed Shannon Hollinger’s debut novel, Best Friends Forever, and I was very excited to be approved for the ARC of her new novel, The Slumber Party. It did not disappoint!
I literally could not put the book down and there was no part of the book that lacked in thrills and suspense. Every time I thought I had something figured out, I was surprised with a twist.
This book is a true psychological thriller with dual timeline, multiple POV and unreliable narrator. It will have you hanging on every word right to the end.

The Slumber Party by Hollinger was a Fantastic read Great character development. I enjoy the twists at the end

(4.5 stars rounded down)

I don't know if there's a concensus among those of us who review books regularly as to what it is we most love about reading. I get that for some people it might be a sense of escapism, or just that it's something they can do to relax. Maybe one day I'll do a poll to find out. For me though, nothing beats that sensation of picking up a book by a new-to-you author and knowing within a few pages that you're going to love it.

This was absolutely the case for me with The Slumber Party. Telling a story from multiple points of view without confusing the reader is not easy. Doing the same thing whilst also switching between present and past timelines is even harder. But this book manages it effortlessly in a way that I can best describe as 'Lisa Jewell-esque'. We know from the beginning that Liz, Sami, Amy and Morgana ('Mo') were inseparable as teenagers. And we know from reading the cover that one of them has died. But why does a hand-written note posted through Liz's letterbox cause her to fear, not only for herself but also her own daugher, Olivia?

The intrigue presented by the 'past' storyline and the growing suspense from the 'present' one are really beautifully done. This is a book had me hooked from the very first page and by half distance I was really struggling to put it down.

If I'm to be ultra-critical, there were one or two instances when I had to double-check and remind myself who was narrating a particular chapter, but this was literally only once or twice and with chapters short enough for me to easily check, this really wasn't a big deal. The book was also a little bit longer than I had been expecting, but this is only worth mentioning because of the sense of frustration that I felt at realising, at about midnight, that I was only 70% in and that there was no way that I was going to be able to finish the book that same night.

What I did do before turning my kindle off was to have a quick browse to see what else Shannon Hollinger had written. And when I realised that this is only her second full length novel (though she has also published a collection of short stories) I was seriously impressed.

The only real problem for me was the ending. Perhaps I missed something due to being tired after my efforts to finish the book the following evening, in which case I can only apologise. But it left me feeling a bit confused and, more significantly, it seemed to lack the sense of 'wow' that all of the preceding chapters seemed to have been building up to.

The sense of - I'm loathe to use the word disappointment, which seems most unfair, but - feeling a bit underwhelmed that this brought about was disproportionate, yet palpable. Imagine that you had come across a new-to-you bakery and that as you stepped inside, your eyes were drawn to some jam doughnuts that were fresh out of the oven. After that first bite, you realised that the dough was cooked to perfection and coated with just the right amount of sugar. You couldn't eat it quickly enough to get to the middle and taste the jam, and that first taste was enough to leave you drooling. But when you got to the middle you realised that that lovely jam, rather than increasing in quantity, petered out leaving that final mouthful a bit dry.

That's absolutely not the end of the world. Everything right up to that point had been perfect and your final reaction, after a little bit of thought, is to keep your fingers crossed that as the baker gains a bit more experience, the next batch will turn out to be something a bit special.

I really hope that this happens with Shannon Hollinger's next book. And you'd have to drag me away in chains to stop me from reading it to find out.

My thanks to the author, Netgalley and Bookouture for my inclusion on the blog tour. I will post my review on Goodreads, Amazon and Instagram.

The Slumber Party had me gripped from the description alone and the book did not disappoint. It was fast paced and had plenty of twists and turns and I really enjoyed it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for my ARC.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Shannon Hollinger for the ARC of this book.

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This was wicked. It jumped around a lot and was clever. The writing was brilliant and it twisted in ways that i definitely wasn't expecting. The characters were written cleverly, the plot never quite giving enough away for you to know where it was going. That being said, sometimes I found the jumping in time was a little confusing, but overall a great book!

Thank you Netgalley, Bookouture and Shannon Hollinger for letting me read “The Slumber Party” in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first Shannon Hollinger book and first impression? HOLY MOLY, what a ride!!
The Slumber Party was an incredible book. It was a roller coaster ride, full of twists and turns. Dark twists, dark topics, yes, but it was such an intense read. That's the best word to describe this story: Intense. The final twist is u-n-b-e-l-i-e-v-a-b-l-e.
The writing was so detailed yet never bored me. The dual timeline keeps you intrigued with each chapter advancing the plot and the suspense. I highly recommend this page-turner!
Shannon is fabulous. I cannot wait for her to release more books!

This book changes from the past, 10 years ago, to the present with 4 best friends.
They seem like best friends on the outside and what they want everyone to believe but what you find out as the story goes on that what you see may not be the truth.
I could not put this down, I had to know what really happened on prom night.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the book to review.