Audiobook Review: The Night of the Sleepover by Kerry Wilkinson
The Night of the Sleepover
Series: Sleepover #1
Author: Kerry Wilkinson
Narrator: Olivia Darnley
Published: October 23, 2023
Audiobook: 8 hours 47 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: October 16-20, 2023
Jessica’s Rating: 3.5 stars
Audiobook Description:
Four girls close their eyes. Only one wakes up.
Leah and her three best friends get changed into their pyjamas, eat pizza and argue about what film to watch. They laugh together until the early hours. But the next morning, Leah blinks open her eyes and sees three empty sleeping bags. The other girls are gone.
Twenty years later. In her small hometown, still-haunted Leah has never been able to shake off the rumours and whispers. How could she have slept through it all? She must know what happened.
Now, a documentary is being made about the night Leah’s best friends disappeared. Is the truth about to come out?
Then an anonymous email arrives in Leah’s inbox. ‘Stop them’.
Somebody out there knows what happened the night of the sleepover. Is Leah in terrible danger? And will she ever find her missing friends – or are some secrets meant to be kept forever?
Jessica’s Review:
The Night of the Sleepover is my first novel by Kerry Wilkinson and I was intrigued by the premise: Four girls have a fun sleepover with pizza and alcohol, go to bed and the next morning there is only Leah and the other three are missing: She slept through everything! What happened to the other girls?
Leah is our narrator and it goes back and forth between present day, the days before the sleepover and afterwards. It is twenty plus years later and a documentary is being filmed by the younger brother of one of the missing girls. Leah starts to get messages for the documentary to be stopped. What did happen that night and what is going on now?
This one was a slow burner and I wasn’t pulled in as I thought I would be until it got closer to the sleepover. I wasn’t really interested in the present-day mystery. I was intrigued as to how much this has affected Leah even to today’s time. Even the entire town: This mystery affected everyone so a whole generation has never had a sleepover because no one wants a repeat! The novel did get moving the closer it got to the night of the sleepover and from there I was into the story! I do look forward to the second in the series which will come out December 15th: We don’t have to wait long! I did enjoy the ending even though I wasn’t blown away by it. My reaction was more of: “Oh wow… Let’s keep this story going!”
The narrator is Olivia Darnley, and she did a good job with her narration and adding to the tone of the story.
Many thanks to the publisher Bookouture for granting me a copy to listen to and review!