Bookworm Blogger #YA: Review: The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Synopsis:
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:
From the start I had a hard time trying to figure out if this was actually a YA book. The writing is beautiful, full and complex at times. Much more so than the recent YA books I've read. Almost like an adult novel but with teen protags.

Violet is inspiring. I loved her character, the author doesn't hold back on her depth of emotions. Jay is also wonderful as lead man and you never really have doubts about him, even when him and Vi have their fair share of spats. But being best friends since childhood you almost know why they feel and act as they do.

Half of the novel is really about Vi and Jay, their friends and the usual school antics. The other half is a murder mystery which Violet is fully part of due to her ability to sense echoes of dead people and animals. Not only that, the echoes remain imprinted on the perpetrators meaning Violet can possibly find the killer. With a whole length of misleads and dead ends, Violet is brought in by her Uncle to find the killer at her own risk. And even though she has a full posse of people behind her making sure she stays out of danger it just takes that one moment and then....

Well I won't tell you the rest. This book is a romance, murder mystery, YA, action packed book that will hold you in right until the end.

This is my first Derting novel and I can't wait to read the next one!

Here's the book trailer! Enjoy!