Review: Slide

Slide by Jill Hathaway

Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Publication Date: March 27th 2012
Pages: 250
Source: Library
Genre: Paranormal, Mystery, Romance
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 distant lately, 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.

Back when Slide came out for the first time I remember hearing many good things about it, so I was very excited when I started reading it. Slide is the story of a girl named Vee who can slide into other people's bodies and see through their eyes. I really liked how interesting and new this idea was right from the beginning.

Vee, the main character, I really liked a lot. Because of her strange behavior she often acts like an outsider, and has a very interesting personality. She has pink hair- which I really liked, I wish she had kept it the entire book. She was much more alternative than many of the other characters in the book, and she finds a way to find the closest thing she can to normal, despite her strange life. I really liked her attitude throughout the story, despite the fact that she was sometimes quite bitter towards a few people that may not have deserved it. She was really interesting and fresh, and I really could imagine her being a real person.

The plot of this book follows a murder mystery, and with her interesting abilities there are many different perspectives of the story, and I really didn't expect the ending. I did think that sometimes some of the things that Vee would pick up on in the story were awe awfully convenient, and really didn't seem to be likely. She always seemed to slide into someone at just the perfect time each time, and that really isn't realistic.

I really found the setting and some of the characters extremely cliche and stereotypical. There were quite a lot of characters were quite the extreme of their group. There were many mean girls and cheerleaders, as well as the bad boys. I really don't mind a few of those in a story, but when there are as many as there were in this book I really start to not believe the setting. In my own experiences, I have never been in a school environment with that many 'mean' or 'bad' people that were that extreme, I just didn't like it.