A cozy funny mystery?? Sign me up. Such a fun and cozy sequel to the expectant detectives. Absolutely devoured.

Thanks to st Martin’s press and netgalley for the chance to read this one in exchange for an honest review

I enjoyed this second installment where Alice and her friends are now moms (mums) of 1 year old babies, and back to their old ways of investigating a murder that took place in their presence. Still love Helen the dog, though I'm not sure the author has been around 1 year old babies very much. Cute series and I look forward to the next one.

"Dead Tired" by Kat Ailes is Book 2 in the expectant detectives mysteries series and it sure is a fun sequel.

A year has passed, the expectant babies have been born, and Alice and her friends are exhausted. They all need something to focus on that is less baby related and more fun. With one friend, Hen, getting a job at an eco-friendly company, the girls all agree to go to an eco-protest. While at the protest, they are suddenly pulled into yet another murder. Chaos ensues and it is up to Alice and her friends to solve the murder once again.

I will admit that I wasn't as invested in the murder mystery part itself this time around. I really enjoyed Alice and her hijinks nonetheless. I did laugh out loud at times too.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Kat Ailes for gifting me this ARC.

I was excited to read more of this series after the utterly quirky and fun first book in the series.
A few characters featured a lot less than they had in the first book, Joe and Lin, but the book was still a fun romp through environmental activism, murder, poorly behaved dogs, and the survival state of raising babies.
I was no where near solving the mystery, but in this series, it doesn't even matter because the narrator, Alice, is so goofy and funny and her wild side character friends are engaging enough to keep me reading.
I hope there will be more books in this charming and utterly unique cozy mystery series.
I never really thought of myself as a mystery reader, but this is just the kind of mystery I want to read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

"Dead Tired" continues Alice's adventures as a new mom and an amateur sleuth. She and her friends meet eco-warriors and they plead with them to come to an event to protest the chopping down of an important forest in their area. Alice and her friends go to the event and chain themselves to the trees. While they are chained together, a member of this eco-warrior group is murdered. The group of women become involved in solving this crime along with maintaining all of the craziness in their lives with children, husbands, and crazy pets.

This was a cute, cozy story that had just enough in it to keep me interested. I liked the characters' camaraderie in the story in addition to how relatable they were to me. However, there were a couple of reservations that I had with the story's pacing. I thought that it was boring at times and could have afforded to eliminate some of the irrelevant details.

"Dead Tired" is advertised as a cozy mystery, and I would most certainly agree that this is true. It's not the most interesting story that I've read, but it was enough.

Dead Tired: An Expectant Mom Mystery
By Kat Ailes
Minotaur Books
June 2024

Review by Cynthia Chow

Less than a year after the very pregnant Alice Nutall and her now-husband Joe left London for the picturesque – and supposedly safer – cozy village of Penton in Cotswold Hills, she is attempting to be one of those Instagram mothers picnicking on a field while eating organic foods with her one-year-old. That doesn’t take into account their notoriously untrainable dog Helen who may be tripping out on mushrooms, nor the completely naked couple sauntering towards Alice and her friends. Well, starkers except for an assortment of body-painted political statements. Raven and Leila claim to be protesting a new wind farm, with plans to chain themselves to trees the following day. While Alice herself prefers to nosh on hamburgers and any prepared foods that might give her an extra 10 minutes of sleep, her vegetarian, activist friend Ailsa pressures the rest of their mom-group into joining their protest that lacks bathrooms and snack breaks. Having already had one close call with a murderer, Alice is unable to accept that they’ve once again stepped into another criminal case when they find Leila, not doing an excellent job of medicating while chained to the tree, but instead being very dead.

While Alice would prefer to ignore the entire thing and instead focus on her son Jack’s overdue one-year-old birthday party, her friend Hen being an employee of the wind farm company makes that impossible. There’s also the fact that their fourth Mom’s group member Poppy has been depressed, with only the thought of a new investigation seeming to pull her out of the doldrums. Ailsa’s sister being the disapproving investigating Inspector should have made them a little more cautious, but instead the moms find themselves questioning the Aether wind farm CEO and discovering Leila’s deceptive past, somewhat surprising since she seemed to let everything hang out for all to see.

This second in the series is an absolute delight as it depicts Alice’s struggles to stay sane while rising a toddler. She’s sadly at this point using a vibrator not of its intended purposes, but instead to clear the ducts in her breasts. Joe is still a very supportive partner though, sharing their duties that include pausing Queer Eye to listen to ramble about her confusing day or falling asleep with Jack while watching Baywatch reruns. So much of the humor comes from her judgy friends lamenting Alice’s tendency to fall into chaos and disorder, someone who no longer blinks at realizing that her boob is still out long after Jack has finished nursing. But what proves so rewarding is how she is always the one to ultimately put together the clues and solve the case, using the skills she once used to track down Instagram histories and Linked-in backgrounds. Being constantly exhausted has forced Alice to prioritize the essentials, with providing sugar-free, organic, child-friendly snacks falling far beneath her investigation.. Rambunctious Helen, a food-spewing baby, and some possible breaking-and-entering ensure that Alice’s dreams of a pastoral life will not be coming true anytime soon, and readers will be all the better for it.

New moms are the last people that you'd expect solving murder mysteries, but, here we find our main character and friends doing just that. The premise of the moms tying themselves to a tree to get time to relax, was hilarious to me. And it is only this group of friends who would end up being brought into a murder as a result. This was an entertaining read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3.5 stars
Oh I love the Expectant Detectives series. The first was one of my favorites of 2023 and Dead Tired was great as well. As a newer mom, I LOVE all of the parenting aspects and wish that I could solve mysteries with my littles :)

Thank you to @macmillanaudio for the gifted copy! Thank you to Minotaur Books for the advanced reader copy!

I enjoyed the first installment in the series so much - the humor was great and I loved seeing pregnant solve a murder. The follow-up was more of that wit and humor that made me love the first, along with some fun character developments. This is such a cozy and funny series, perfect for mystery lovers who appreciate a laugh. As always, I appreciate the representation of motherhood and the various shapes that can take. I’m excited for the next installment!

DEAD TIRED
Thank you to St Martin's Press and NetGalley for the e-arc.

I love a good cozy mystery- and Kat Ailes has it down. Her books have enough mystery to keep me entertained, but are light enough to let me pick them up and put them down as I have time.

Alice and her friends are bonded through their children and managing life as new moms. During a pinterest-fail type of picnic, they get involved in an pro-environmental group trying to save the meadow. What starts as just attending a meeting ends in being chained to trees overnight- and when they wake up, one of the group's member's has been murdered.

First thought was how many murders can there be in one town? There is such tension in a hippy town. I just can't get over all of the resentment and secrets! I do love their girl/mom group- they're all so different but bonded over their babies- and probably never would be friends otherwise. The pacing of this book was pretty quick and made it easy to jump back into the story. I will also note that I was probably more interested in Alice and her friends than I was in actually finding out who the murderer was.


Helen was the star of the first book- but this book she made me so anxious! As a dog mom, I am pretty crazy about my pups. She was eating mushrooms?! I would be in a panic. Also when she was like running up to random people- I would feel so anxious and guilty. I love her but maybe it's time she needs some training. 😅

Dead Tired follows the same group of friends as Expectant Detectives except their babies are a year older and motherhood has fully set in. What I love about these books is I read them at almost the right time to be in the same stage as first time motherhood and I laughed so much during this. So much of the book was raw and accurate to how it actually was. The mystery and murder solving was fun too but what made me love this book was the normalizing of all the feelings the first year can bring. It was truly so fun.

Kat soles does it again! Alice and her mum mates find themselves linked to another murder this time with babies in tow and madcap chaos reigns. This is the perfect summer read and made me laugh out loud over some of the baby complications. I don’t know how she manages to get it right AND funny when if it was you in the situation laughing would be your last thought! Read the first in this series and then enjoy this one too.

Thank you to #netgalley #minotaurbooks and the author for this ebook to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Alice is a mom of a one year old, and she's kept on touch with the mom friends she met during her prenatal classes. A year ago, she, Poppy, Hen, and Ailsa managed to solve a murder while being pregnant and having their babies. Now, when a couple of protesters happen upon a picnic with the four of them and their toddlers, the moms decide that the protesters have a few good points, and get roped into joining the cause. But when one of the protesters gets killed the night they all chain themselves to the trees they're trying to save, Alice and the moms start nosing around to find out who did it. Not the worst way to spend the end of your maternity leave, right?

This is the cozy mystery series for moms who want reminders of the madness that is the first year. These moms certainly go through some fun twists and turns with their kids, and that's not to mention the murder investigation or the crazy dogs. For those of us who have been there, this is a fun and silly story, that touches on a bunch of those frustrating, delightful, ridiculous moments of toddlerhood.

The mystery itself is laid out well, and the end result was a great twist. I didn't see one of the boys of the ending coming, so that was quite fun, too.

I received an Advanced Reader Copy via NetGalley in return for sharing my thoughts on this book. Thanks to the author and publisher for this opportunity!

3.5/5 stars, rounded up

Thank you Minotaur Books for the advanced reading copy!

SYNOPSIS -- Alice and the gang are back, this time with a gaggle of one-year-old babies in tow! With little to no sleep, Alice and her friends decide to join an eco-protest and use the night chained to trees as an excuse to get some baby-free sleep. When one of their fellow protestors is found dead the next morning, Alice struggles to NOT get involved like the last time she accidentally came face to face with a murder. Alice and the group know they can solve this crime if given the opportunity... so they make an opportunity for themselves to do something not related to the babies for the first time in a year, and put themselves at risk of uncovering some pretty big secrets.

It was so fun to be back with Alice and all of her friends, including crazy dog, Helen. Their not-so-sleepy countryside town is such a fun setting to read about and it was super easy to jump right back in with this unique and fun bunch. I think this book was a bit faster-paced than the first one, and I really enjoyed reading it! There were a few aspects that started to feel repetitive -- like how crazy Helen the dog is, for example -- and I felt that way in #1, as well. I think these could be like 5% shorter and a little bit more exciting. The story, however, was great, and the mystery took me by surprise! Things wrapped up really unexpectedly and pretty quick, leaving me wanting more of this group!

This sequel to The Expectant Detectives picks up about a year after the events of the first book. Alice and her friends now all have babies about a year old, and once again get caught up in investigating a murder in their town in the British countryside, this time of a protestor at an environmental protest.

This was a cute read, just not as good as the first book. Though the mystery was good, it just wasn’t a book that held my full attention. There also were a lot of details describing Alice’s and the other babies that kept pulling me out of the narrative - oftentimes it seemed like they were tiny babies not one year olds (what one year old is cluster feeding nursing all night), while at other times they seem older. I know it’s a minor quibble but it was distracting. But overall it was a fun read and I definitely will keep reading the series.

3.75 stars

Fun cozy mystery, it makes me think of a cross between Bridget Jones and Miss Marple, Alice and her partner moved from London to the Cotswolds in the previous book. She now a new mom with a group of friends she met in her antenatal classes and they become involved with a group of protestors they met while on a picnic in a meadow, when one of the protestors is found dead, they ladies join together to investigate.

Some things I loved about this: absolutely laugh out loud funny motherhood moments. I think fictional books about motherhood and pregnancy are few and far between and I enjoy that representation! I loved the plot of this one, much more than the first. However, the pacing felt off for me and it took me much longer to finish it than I would’ve hoped for,

This was a quirky and weird book but I really liked it. I was a simple read and I thought the characters were fairly relatable. I would call this a cozy mystery and had some fun in it.

This was a cute story and I love every bit. There was an interesting plot twist and the characters were fun and relatable. Looking forward to trying more from this author.

Alice and her friends are settling into motherhood, but they have to deal with a little side of murder in the local eco conscious group. The friends put on their detective caps and start investigating on their own around town. There are a ton of plot twists, lots of fun banter, and this book kept me guessing until the big reveal in the end! Definitely a great choice for a little mysterious reading.