Review: The Body Finder by Kimberely Derting

Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her "power" to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes that the dead leave behind in the world... and the imprints that attach to their killers.

Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find the dead birds her cat had tired of playing with. But now that a serial killer has begun terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he's claimed haunt her daily, she realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.

Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet on her quest to find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved to find herself hoping that Jay's intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she's falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer... and becoming his prey herself

Review:

The Body Finder revolves around Violet who can sense the traces that murder victims leave behind. When girls in her town start turning up dead--murdered--Violet and her best friend Jay go on a quest to find the killer. I found this aspect of the novel to be the most interesting. The senses work kind of like the imprint of the murderee left on the murderer which only Violet can see.

I really found this to be quite an awesome story once I got into it. It was suspensful and I really loved the chapters that were in the POV of the killer--they had such a sick feel to them which I think Derting did a fantastic job of. I won't say too much on that front, because towards the end it provides a twist in the story and is very spoilery. But it was definitely a twist I did not see coming from a mile.

Violet was a nice narrator. There wasn't anything outstanding about her, but she wasn't the kind of character I wanted to punch in the face. She took risks, listened to advice and wasn't pathetic in any ways. However, her narration voice didn't stand out to me all that much. It was a narration I fell into quickly, but didn't have much "punch", I guess you could say.

Rating: 4 stars
Publication Date: March 16th 2010
Publisher: Headline
Source: Bought
Date Read: April 2011
Page Count: 327
Series/Stand Alone: First in the Body Finder Trilogy