Sometimes you read the synopsis of a book and you think ‘that’s brilliant!’  The premise of the story is something completely different and you want to start reading it straight away.  Slide by debut author, Jill Hathaway, was one of those books and I couldn’t wait to get into it (especially after I saw the great cover!).

“Sylvia “Vee” Bell hates that, like her deceased mother, she has narcolepsy. But this embarrassing condition is nowhere near as bad as what happens during these episodes: when Vee passes out she actually slides into somebody else’s conciousness and experiences the world through that person’s eyes. This is how Vee finds herself in the head of a killer, standing over a classmate’s slashed and murdered body.

When another cheerleader turns up dead, Vee realizes that someone is killing off her sister’s friends. Suddenly everyone is a suspect, and Vee finds herself enmeshed in a terrifying web of secrets, lies and danger. She must face up to the fact that she can trust no one-not even the family and friends she thought she knew.”

Slide is a fast-paced thriller that keeps you guessing until the very end.  If narcolepsy wasn’t hard to deal with by itself, Vee also has this terrifying ‘gift’ that she also has to deal with.  Vee is a likeable character who has to cope with her condition by herself because everyone she has tried to tell thinks she is lying.  Her sliding often happens quite unexpectedly and she can’t stop it.  She often can’t tell who’s head she’ll end up in and it means she sometimes finds out the deepest secrets and fears of people she knows.  I really liked how Jill Hathaway made the connection between sliding and objects with some sentimental value attached, which meant that Vee’s sliding wasn’t just random.

Jill builds up the tension throughout the story, right up until the chilling climax.  Vee is the only one who knows the truth, but she can’t tell anyone she knows, and she’s afraid to talk to anyone in case that person is the killer.  I hadn’t picked the killer so the finale was even better.  My favourite part of the story was Vee’s realisation about her gift, as it gave her some hope that she could save her family.

Slide is a fantastic debut from Jill Hathaway and I’ll look forward to reading more from her in the future.

4 out of 5 stars