Slide - Review

Slide by Jill Hathaway

Publisher - HarperCollinsPages - 250My Rating - 

'Vee Bell hates having narcolepsy. But collapsing at school is nowhere near as bad as the truth - when Vee passes out she slides into other people's heads and ends up seeing through their eyes. Then Vee finds herself in the head of a killer, standing over the body of a cheerleader.Now another cheerleader is dead, and everyone is a suspect. Struggling to understand her terrifying and unwanted 'gift'. Vee is tangled in a web of secret, lies and danger...'
The book cover drew me in first. The fallacy of 'never judging a book by the cover' is a common one, and as a self-published author, I try hard and often fail to make an interesting cover. This one is amazing. One of the best I've seen in ages. Then I read the blurb. A book about narcolepsy. Not a plot I've read before and I thought it could be interesting.
*SPOILER* Sylvia 'Vee' Bell is sat in English lit class as they read 'Julius Caeser' by Shakespeare. She was struggling not to fall asleep, and who can blame her. We learn she has the sleeping disorder narcolepsy which makes her fall asleep, or lose consciousness, without her wanting to. No matter how hard she fights it, she blacks out. Excusing herself from the class she goes to the toilets where after seeing the feets of her sisters friends under the bathroom stall, Vee thinks Sophie is throwing up due to bulima, she has an episode where she goes into the mind of another of her sister's friend. They talk about Sophie, that she's going out with Scotch (a boy in her year) and how this friend is going to make her pay. That night however, after her sister and this 'bitchy' friend are supposed to have a sleep over, they tell Vee they are going out to the cinema. When in actual fact they go to a frat party. Vee has an episode where she looks into the eyes of Sophie who is crying her heart out after Vee's sisters friend sends a naked photo of Sophie to the entire football team. Disgusted with her sister's cheer leading friends, Vee tries wait up for her sister. But she ends up having another episode. Think she was in the mind of Sophie again, she sees Sophie dead on her bed. She's seeing through the eyes of a killer leaving a fake suicide note. For the rest of the book, Vee decides to be proactive. Especially after another cheerleader commits suicide and Vee thinks the killer got to her too. The suspects go from her psychology teacher, who is rumoured to have had an affair with Sophie as everyone discovers she was pregnant. To her best friend, Rollins, to Sophie's suspected baby's daddy, Scotch. 
My Review Like I said before, I was very interested in this book after reading the blurb as the idea behind it was unusual and different from all the other YA fiction books that has saturated the market these days. I really enjoyed reading this book and liked Vee's family and how they were portrayed and then grew as the book developed. The fragile relationship between Vee and her sister was a familiar one. But not necessarily an over used one. Vee search for the killer could have been more proactive, I'm thinking Harriette the Spy, Nancy Drew, Heather Wells or even Veronica Mars, but it's a nice, well paced story of Vee trying to harness her gift to find the killer. Even though there was three or four different suspects, it was slightly obvious that the new guy and Vee's love interest had something to do with it. The lack of history from him and Vee's quick judgement of him, despite the fact that when he showed up only then did the murders begin, the wasn't a suspect. 
Despite one character sticking out to be the killer, this book was imaginative, well paced and easy to read. Well worth a read for something a bit different.