“Slide” by Jill Hathaway

Author: Jill Hathaway

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.

Authors who read this book:

Cynthia Hand (5 stars)

This is the very first book that I decided to blurb. Which of course means I loved it, if I am willing to attach my name to it. I think it’s a perfect example of a writer getting all of the elements right: a great narrative voice, a simple but well-executed premise, tons of thrills (this book is a THRILLER– there are definitely a few of those what I like to call Rear Window moments. You know, in Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart, when he’s spying on his neighbor who he thinks is a murderer and Grace Kelly breaks into the scary neighbor’s apartment to look for evidence, and then the murderer COMES HOME? And Jimmy Stewart can only watch it all helplessly? Well, Slide is like that. Gave me chills a couple of times.), and the story speaks to the voyeur in all of us, except in this case, the MC can’t help but watch…

“The Butterfly Clues” by Kate Ellison

Author: Kate Ellison

Penelope (Lo) Marin has always loved to collect beautiful things. Her dad’s consulting job means she’s grown up moving from one rundown city to the next, and she’s learned to cope by collecting (sometimes even stealing) quirky trinkets and souvenirs in each new place—possessions that allow her to feel at least some semblance of home.

But in the year since her brother Oren’s death, Lo’s hoarding has blossomed into a full-blown, potentially dangerous obsession. She discovers a beautiful, antique butterfly pendant during a routine scour at a weekend flea market, and recognizes it as having been stolen from the home of a recently murdered girl known only as “Sapphire”—a girl just a few years older than Lo. As usual when Lo begins to obsess over something, she can’t get the murder out of her mind.

As she attempts to piece together the mysterious “butterfly clues,” with the unlikely help of a street artist named Flynt, Lo quickly finds herself caught up in a seedy, violent underworld much closer to home than she ever imagined—a world, she’ll ultimately discover, that could hold the key to her brother’s tragic death.

Authors who read this book:

Lauren Oliver

Kate is, in addition to being a phenomenally talented artist, also a brilliant writer, as is evidenced by her dark, gorgeous, and sexy new YA thriller, The Butterfly Clues. I am such a huge fan of both the girl and the book. The Butterfly Clues is such an immersive mystery, with an unconventional heroine who suffers from OCD.

“Across the Universe” by Beth Revis

Author: Beth Revis

“Across the Universe” series: book #1

A love out of time. A spaceship built of secrets and murder.

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.

Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone-one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship-tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn’t do something soon, her parents will be next.

Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there’s only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

Authors who read this book:

Cynthia Hand (5 stars)

I felt oddly competitive with this book. But it’s terrific, seriously. One of the best first chapters ever written, I think. I get cold just thinking about it. And it’s not like any other book I’ve read, which is another reason it’s great. Plus everyone says that Beth Revis is just a lovely lovely lovely person. So I can’t be too jealous. Or I shouldn’t be. It deserves every bit of the praise it gets.

Jill Hathaway (5 stars)

Wow! All I can say is I’m totally impressed by this world Beth created and all the twists and turns the story takes! Well done!