Review: Slide

Slide by Jill Hathaway

Published by Balzer and Bray for HarperCollins

Genre: YA

$17.99 (US Hardback)

250 pages

What it's about:
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:
This book really took me by surprise. I was not expecting it to have the voice it did have or my reactions I had towards this book.

The tone of this voice was darker than I had been expecting. To be honest, I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting, but this book was not it--in a good way. There were a lot of situations mentioned in this book that most of the time are not talked about: Teen suicide, murder, bullying, mental problems, teen sex, molestation, swearing, all of that was talked about and shown in detail. Can you see why I wasn't expecting all this in a book? These are hard subjects to talk and write about and this book had them all.
While reading Slide, I was constantly sad, excited, intrigued, and a whole mess of other emotions. I really enjoyed how everyone seemed real. I could actually believe that Vee was a real teenage girl with some very horrible problems. The characters were believable in all their actions even if everything had a dark side to it. Heck, even the high school life seemed realistic to me. That doesn't happen often.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book even if I was left feeling really sad by the end. It was a short and fast read but it had me guessing what would happen next? What would Vee see when she slides into someone? While I do not see how this is going to be turned into a series but it is, I will probably continue with the series. I'm definitely interested in how the series will go from here.

My rating: 8/10