The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

Published 2010 by Harper

327 Pages (Paperback)
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.

You know when you start reading so many books that are just good but not really anything more. And that you start to think that those books are really good because you just haven’t read one of those OH MY GOD books? Well this book definitely broke that cycle for me. I often find that when I get stuck in one of those book phases where I think every book is really good because nothing great comes and says “here pick me pick me!” well I start to get uninspired to read, which is bad. Even though the books are good they all aren’t anything special, and I don’t know about you, but I read for those special books. I know that not every book you read is going to be one of those books, not even half or a quarter. But every now and then I do want to read one of those wow books.

This was a WOW book. It is unlike anything I’ve ever read, which is always great, and I just loved everything about from Violet to Jay to the serial killers few pages of point of view. One of the things this book really has going for it is there really isn’t anything like it out. So there’s nothing to compare it to but that in itself is pretty awesome. By the way, I really think we need more crime/killers thriller books in YA, let’s spice things up a bit! I would love to read more from this genre! As much as I still love reading about vampires, werewolves, angels, etc. I really want some more diversity, plus we don’t always need the main plot of the story to be about love. Again, I really enjoy stories with love interests but I’d almost rather it be a minor plot, at least until the end of the story (aka series) Love needs time to grow and strengthen not be like “Wow, I’m a vampire/werewolf/witch/angel/evil bad boy/creature that’s really bad, you should really stay away from me. But I guess since you’re the new girl in town who doesn’t really have any friends and is just average and needy, (OR) I’m the new guy in town and you’re the supposedly just average girl but is really a super human something or other who is going to help save the world and my total badness, We should/have to be together.” NO! No, no, no, no, no! I’m sorry that used to work for me a few years ago, now...well no. Sorry Twilight, I love you but I have to admit this example was with you in mind. Although the second part associates with some of my favorite books such as (TV show) Vampire Diaries, Hush Hush, The Iron King, etc. So actually I’m not quite sick of those, besides usually the girls are, if not kick ass, have a very strong back bone. Anyway, long explanation aside, it basically comes down to I want to see something else something done differently. The Body Finder totally did that and blew my expectations away. It basically defied the “normal” YA. Yah for defiant books!

This review is getting quite long and I haven’t even started my opinions on the actual book! Bear with me! So The Body Finder defied my expectations with just about everything and is now one of my favorite books ever. Truthfully I can’t wait to go back and read it again, well maybe when I don’t have a whole bookcase full of books I have to read. What really makes this story is something I’ve been asking myself for a while. The whole book is amazing but I think the characters are brilliant. And oh my god does Violet actually have three good no-backstabbing friends? Hello true, multiple, friendships in YA, it’s been a LONG time, how’s it been? Friendship is so important in life that I just don’t get why, in YA it seems like no one has friends or only one that’s really only there for the character to tell all their sob story paranormal problems to, well that’s part of friendship but it’s a lot more than that. I loved Violet’s group of friends, they all brought something different to the story and the relationship they shared. It was great and made me all warm and cozy knowing that there are really close friendships out there in YA again. Especially when you get to Violet and Jay’s friendship, I just, *sigh*, I mean how amazing was that. I can’t really put it into words, but I’m going to try. You know those books where there’s a paranormal bad ass guy that makes your heart beat really fast in a matter of seconds of entering on a page. Well that wasn’t the case at all with Jay, he made me feel warm and cozy and then slowly got my heart beating a little faster as the book went on. It wasn’t fast and spontaneous; it was slow, warm, and genuine. And that is how love should be, not I see you on the street we’re spontaneously drawn together into a whirlwind of paranormal and therefore are in love. No, this was slow building genuine love. What a difference from every YA book I’ve ever read. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sexy hot throw you against the wall guys, but sometimes you need something a little different, and Jay happened to come at the perfect time.

I had more to say about the book, like I loved the creepy serial killers point of view pages in the books and the Violet’s gift is so cool (I necessarily want it myself but again, such a refresher from present YA), but my review would seem weird from being all general to very specific (Do you like how I added some stuff anyway :)