Review: Slide by Jill Hathaway

Title: Slide

Author: Jill Hathaway
Publication date: March 1st 2012
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Age group: Young Adult
Genre: Mystery
Cover rating: 4/5
Content rating: 3/5
Buy: Amazon / The Book Depository

Description via Goodreads:

Vee Bell is certain of one irrefutable truth—her sister’s friend Sophie didn’t kill herself. She was murdered. 

Vee knows this because she was there. Everyone believes Vee is narcoleptic, but she doesn’t actually fall asleep during these episodes: When she passes out, she slides into somebody else’s mind and experiences the world through that person’s eyes. She’s slid into her sister as she cheated on a math test, into a teacher sneaking a drink before class. She learned the worst about a supposed “friend” when she slid into her during a school dance. But nothing could have prepared Vee for what happens one October night when she slides into the mind of someone holding a bloody knife, standing over Sophie’s slashed body.  

Vee desperately wishes she could share her secret, but who would believe her? It sounds so crazy that she can’t bring herself to tell her best friend, Rollins, let alone the police. Even if she could confide in Rollins, he has been acting off lately, more distant, especially now that she’s been spending more time with Zane.  

Enmeshed in a terrifying web of secrets, lies, and danger and with no one to turn to, Vee must find a way to unmask the killer before he or she strikes again.

My thoughts:
I had my eye on Slide from the first time I heard it was going to be released. I'm definitely into mystery books this year for some reason and I adore anything to do with paranormal 'gifts'. Since I won a signed copy of this, I was really hoping I would like it. And I did! It was a good read and absolutely worth my time. Jill Hathaway is certainly a talented author and I can't wait to see what else she writes in the future. This was a really enjoyable debut novel! I hadn't realized there was going to be a sequel but I will definitely read it.

Slide is about a teenage girl, Sylvia ''Vee'' Bell, who has an unusual gift. When she touches something that somebody else previously touched, she gets pulled into their mind and can watch everything they're doing at that exact moment. I love this whole concept! It was interesting watching Vee try to deal with this. While often, she sees pretty mundane things, this one time she witnesses a murder- the bigger problem is, everybody thinks it was a suicide. I felt so sorry for Vee as she tried to deal with this on her own because she knew people would not believe her.

This book kept me on my toes for the most part. I was rushing through, eager to know how everything was going to end up. There are a few suspects due to circumstances and it was fun trying to figure out who was innocent and who wasn't. However, I figured it out way before Vee did! It was kind of obvious after a while and then I was left just sitting there, waiting for Vee to catch on too. She saw all the clues yet took way too long to put them all together. That did ruin a little of the suspense for the last quarter of the book and I wish it had been either more subtle, or Vee had been a little more clued in.

I'd be lying if I said this book didn't have me hooked though. There was something kind of infectious about it and I loved many aspects of it. Hathaway's writing flows well and it was easy to get lost in Vee's world. I enjoyed all the secondary characters and the plot in general. It did get kind of crazy towards the end which was interesting. All in all, I would recommend this for the characters and the paranormal aspect, but the mystery was lacking for me. Which I suppose is a big deal in a mystery book!