Slide by Jill Hathaway

Sylvia "Vee" Bell is most of the way to being the school freak because everyone thinks she has narcolepsy which means she can drop off to sleep at any minute without any warning.  It is a frustrating condition, one that leaves her tired and sometimes grumpy.  Her best friend Rollins thinks she also has OCD because she hates to touch things other people have handled, but it isn't really OCD - and it isn't really narcolepsy either.  What people take as a narcolepsy attack are really moments when Vee loses grip on her own body and own consciousness and slides into someone elses mind, seeing the world through their eyes.

It is a lonely existence because she has no one to tell, no one she thinks will believe her - she is even too afraid to tell Rollins, letting him believe she is just a little weird is better than him thinking she is crazy.  As if high school wasn't stressful enough, now she has to worry about sliding into the wrong person too.  Sliding used to be a rare event, but with each year that passes Vee slides more and more - and this time she has seen something she wasn't meant to see, the murder of a girl from school.  Vee can't get the image out of head, and to make matters worse everyone thinks it was a suicide.  Then a second body is discovered and Vee struggles with the realisation that someone she has met is a killer - because she can only slide into someone when she touches something that belongs to them, something they have made a connection with.

Slide was a fun and absorbing read, one that had me hooked from the beginning and rapidly turnign the pages to find out who the killer was and what their connection was to Vee.  This is not high brow literature, but it was an addictive read that I did not want to put down, and there were enough viable murder suspects to keep the story moving at a rapid pace with the twists and turns leading to an expected/unexpected ending that has left me itching to read the next book in the series.  The characters are not rendered in great detail, but they are well defined and easy to connect with, and while there are the expected characters in a teenage novel (the cheerleader, the rebel, the jock, the ex best friend) they are not so cliched that you roll your eyes and sigh and wait for something new.

The "science" of how sliding works is well thought out and Hathaway obviously spent a little it of time figuring out the rules of how sliding works because each slide felt "real" - nothing happened to jar you out of the reality.  I really enjoyed this book and hope that Hathaway continues to write more books, not only in the series, but also in general as she has a deft touch for writing readable books that leave you absorbed, fascinated, and thoroughly satisfied.  I can't wait for Imposter to arrive so I can see what happens next for Vee, her family, and friends.

If you like this book then try:

• Imposter by Jill Hathaway
• Numbers by Rachel Ward
• Anna dressed in blood by Kendare Blake
• Nobody by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
• Origin by Jessica Khoury
• Sister assassin by Kiersten White
• Fracture by Megan Miranda
• Every other day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
• Graceling by Kristin Cashore
• I swear by Lane Davis
• The future of us by Jay Asher
• Revived by Cat Patrick
• Sleeper code by Tom Sniegoski
• Thirteen days to midnight by Patrick Carman

Reviewed by Brilla