Review: The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

Series: The Body Finder, book #1

Published: March 16th 2010

Publisher: HarperTeen

Details: Hardcover, 327 pages

My rating: 4/5

My summary:

About a girl who “senses” murdered bodies. This is a sweet first love story with many similarities to Bella and Edward, allthough no vampires involved. There is also a murder mystery which to me was the weaker part of the book. Still very enjoyable read.

See my full review here:

Synopsis:

A serial killer on the loose. A girl with a morbid ability. And the boy who would never let anything happen to her.

Violet Ambrose can find the dead. Or at least, those who have been murdered. She can sense the echoes they leave behind… and the imprints they leave on their killers. As if that weren’t enough to deal with during junior year, she also has a sudden, inexplicable, and consuming crush on her best friend since childhood, Jay Heaton.

Now a serial killer has begun terrorizing Violet’s small town… and she realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.

My thoughts:

I heard a lot about this book on various book blogs, usually in rave reviews.

It can be classified as paranormal romance with suspense. The romance is not paranormal per se, as in both people are actually human. The main character Violet however has some unique paranormal abilities.

Her paranormal ability is that she senses bodies of those who have been murdered. It is as if she has a sixth sense, capturing some kind of energy that eminates from murdered bodies, that is; bodies that are not in peace. This may sound strange but is very well described in the book, and you can practically sense it as you are reading it.

Violet lives in the small town Burke with her family. Her best friend and childhood friend is Jay. We enter the story where Violet is starting to have feelings for Jay. At about the same time girls start disappearing in and around her town, to be discovered murdered. Seeing as she can sense not only the victims of the murders but also the murderers themselves, Violet decides to try and capture the murderer herself.

It sounds like a book centered around the capturing of a murderer, but really, most of the book is romance. The murderer is constantly lingering as a threat in the background but the main focus of the story is the relationship between Violet and her love interest Jay.

That doesn’t matter though as the romance is really sweet. It’s an all-consuming first love kind of romance. And even though Jay is not a vampire, (he’s just a normal guy) he reminds me a little of Edward in terms of his personality, slightly overprotective but really sweet. Come to think of it, Violet sort of reminded me a Bella too, in how she’s constantly trying not to cause anyone trouble, hates to be the center of attention and manages to put herself in danger all the time.

The suspense was well written but had a couple of logical gaps regarding some parts of the plot. I just didn’t buy that a serial killer would behave the way he did in this book.

But as I said earlier, that doesn’t really matter as the romance is the focus of the story, and as such is one of the sweetest romances I have read in a while. So all in all, this is a page turner which is definitely worth the read. Apparently there is a sequel coming out next year, Desires of the Dead, which I’m very happy about. I would love to read more about Jay and Violet!