Spooktacular Sunday: The Body Finder

 

I won't even comment on the usual lateness of my posts except to say that late has become my new norm and I'm not liking it one little bit. Countdown to deployment is T-minus 3 days and I'm working very hard on staying positive and happy, not to mention busy. We all know that for me busywork means cleaning and boy, is my bathroom looking sparkly right about now. I bet you really wanted to know that too:)

 

This week I am bringing you a review of Kimberly Derting's The Body Finder, a book that Jenny declared was one of her all time FAVORITES, with capitol letters and everything. She was afraid that it might be icky because of the title and all, but assures me that it is not. Me, I like the occasional ick factor, but Jenny, not so much.

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Book Description:

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. 

Jenny's Review:

Violet Ambrose has a skill for finding dead bodies.  She can somehow sense an “echo” coming from the body and feels called to it. As an eight year old child she found the body of a young girl, but since then it has been the bodies of animals left out in the woods or areas around her house. These “echos” come to her as a feeling, smell, taste, or visual sign of the victims murder, but it also leaves the same “echo”  on the person or animal that performed the murder. The only people that know about this strange force are her parents, her uncle (the police chief), and her best friend, Jay.  Everything changes for Violet when she is drawn to a body of a missing girl in the water near her home, this find sets off a string of missing girls in the small towns around Violet. Violet decides that she wants to hunt this murderer herself using her skills. All of this leads to one of the most suspenseful books that I have read in a long time, as the hunter becomes the hunted and Violet finds herself in a chase for her own life.  While all of this is going on Violet is also beginning to have feelings for her long time best friend Jay, who is now on the radar of every girl in the school. Violet hates the changes between their friendship and wants more but is to afraid to tell Jay this. Will they end up together? I want to tell you more, but don’t want to ruin any of the joy of reading this book and the twists and turns that you need to experience for yourself.

This seriously was one of the most suspenseful books I have ever read, and it was GREAT!  It was one of those books that you were afraid to put down because you had no idea what was going to happen next and were biting your finger nails in anticipation. The way the book is laid out, you get a few chapters that are writing from the mind and view of the murderer, but there are no clear details of who they are hunting at the time. This was especially suspenseful because you got the hint of what was to come during these chapters but with no clarity.   There are many points where you want to scream in fear for Violet and then knock her on the head in other places because she is so blind about her relationship with Jay. I loved this book, and good news there is a sequel!  This book would be good for high school and older, as there is teen party scenes, mature boy girl relationships, and due to the fact that there is a man hunting for a girls so I would not think appropriate for younger readers.