Book Review: Slide by Jill Hathaway

Title: Slide
Author: Jill Hathaway
Publisher: Balzer and Bray
Genre: YA (paranormal)
Why I read it/how I found it: Read it as part of the 2012 Debut Authors Challenge.

Description:
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.


Review:
Well, let's start off with the good. I think that Vee's voice is spot-on for a teenager. Realistic, yet not over-the-top. It probably helps that Hathaway's a high school teacher, I definitely think she's able to insert herself into the mind of a teenage girl very well. I liked a lot of the characters, mostly Vee, Rollins, and Mattie (who I didn't think I'd like at the start). And this concept of sliding is very interesting, so it was fun to explore that.


Okay, well, the plot doesn't go along so well. I didn't expect who the murderer would be, but that's because the story of why this is happening is way too far-fetched to be believable. I want to have an "aha! So that's it!" moment when the killer is revealed, but instead I got an "oh...that's it?"
Also, there were a lot of cliches in here for me. Vee used to be a popular cheerleader, but now she hangs with the social outcasts and her baby sister's the popular one. Her mom's died from cancer and her dad's a doctor and buries himself in his work so he's not available for his daughters. I guess I just wanted more, you know?


Other information: There's going to be a sequel to Slide titled Imposter. Jill Hathaway's blog is here.