The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

• **2010 Debut Author Challenge List**
• Reading level: Young Adult
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1 edition (March 16, 2010)
• 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 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 dead birds her cat left for her. But now that a serial killer is terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he's claimed haunt her daily, Violet realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.


Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved by her hope 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.


My Review: I always enjoy reading stories that take their time, weaving in plot elements, creating credible characters and conflicts, making their world of words a place I want to remain in until the very end. THE BODY FINDER is an entertaining, fully developed novel with a supernatural twist and a boy-next-door any girl would love to call her guy. Violet Ambrose is a junior in high school. She has a childhood best friend named Jay and a strange ability to hear the "echoes" of the dead. Young girls begin to disappear too close to home and Ambrose discovers the body of one. While she tries to come to grips with her changing feelings towards Jay, she must also deal with finding out the madman killing girls--before it's too late.


This story drew me in from page one as Violet walks through the forest with her dad. She is only eight and discovers her first dead human body. From then on I was intrigued by the storyline, Violet's world, the fully realized characters, the murder mystery, and the growing attraction between best friends. Derting has written a suspenseful and entertaining  novel and I recommended it.


Rating: ++++


Favorite Scene (from page 181): 
     "When she saw him there, behind the wheel, she stopped walking, trying not to look so thankful as she blinked away the tears.
     She heard the door opening, and before she could catch her gratified breath the driver was out of the car and she was in his arms.
     She wanted to breathe, to inhale his lethally musky scent, but she couldn't find the air around her. She was suffocated in the strength, the warmth, of him.
     Time seemed irrelevant at that point; it could have been seconds or hours. It didn't matter. She didn't even realize she'd been crying again until he pulled away and leaned down to kiss her wet cheek."


For Fans Of: Contemporary, paranormal, fantasy YA.


Book Source: Library


Reviewed By: Laurie