The Body Finder
By: Kimberly Derting
HarperTeen
ISBN-13: 9780061779817
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
Violet Ambrose found the dead body of a murdered girl when she was eight years old. But since then it's been a string of animal corpses that she buries in a makeshift graveyard. She's mostly concerned with being a teenager and dealing with emerging feelings that are more than just friendly towards her best friend Jay, who has grown up A LOT this summer. School has started and Violet is just living her life. Until girls start going missing and she begins finding the bodies. The romance aspect of this book was extremely well-done and Violet's ability, while creepy, was refreshingly different from the average paranormal bent to a YA book. I am not so far from being a teenager myself that I can't recognize just how realistic the author's portrayls of Violet, Jay, Lissie, Chelsea, Jules and Claire are (even Claire's extreme cluelessness). I appreciated that the parents were an integral part of the kids' lives and that they were well-drawn out and also realistic as people. Everything about this book was pretty wonderful except for the fact that it did feel like some of the will-they, won't they between Jay and Violet was unnecessary and forced. Other than that this was a great, quick read that you won't want to put down.
VERDICT: 4.5/5 Stars
*No money was exchanged for this review. This book is now available online and in stores.*
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