The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting
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.
I think this story was great but it was dragged on a little too much by the main girl dying over wanting to know if her best friend likes her the way she likes him. In fact that is my only complaint about the book.
I find that the story was different from others books I’ve read, her power or curse, which ever you want to call it, is unique in its own little way. I like the book I even like some of the characters in the book, like Chelsea, she is not seen much but she is one of those friends that everyone hopes to have (kind of like my friend Sandy).
Spoilers
Violet is a normal girl, other than the fact that see can sense when something dead is near and the thing that killed it. She has grown up with this gift and at the age of six she discovers her first human body, it was a body of a girl. They never found her killer.
She has a best friend, his name is Jay and he is the only other person that knows about her gift/curse other than her family. When they both turn seventeen, Violet finally starts seeing him as the cutest boy in the world I guess you can say, and so do other girls. Of course Violet and Jay come to a disagreement and she ends up going to the homecoming dance with someone else and he with the most beautiful girl in school. Of course the disagreement will be over Violet leaving his side, while in searcher for this murderer that has come into town killing teenage girls.
Violet decides that she has this power and wants to use it to find this killer, and she does. The killer admits to everything even the girl Violet found when she was 6. The town thinks it is safe again, but what Violet doesn’t know is that the serial killer has a partner and that the partner knows she’s responsible for the caught killer ending up in jail. He decides that before leaving town she needs to die or she might catch him too.
So Violet and Jay end up together before homecoming of course, so they are dating now and loving it, but one day Jay has to leave the house from there make out sessions held in Violet’s room, every day after school to help his mom with something and Violet feeling safe decides to go for a run by herself on a trail she always takes, it wasn’t until she was far enough away from her house she senses something and figures out that it is following her, she looks back and sees a man hiding his face painted in army camouflage colours. She gets scared and starts to run, of course, and he starts to chase her, then as she runs she hear Jay calling for her and she starts yelling for help, she ends up rolling down a hill and hurting her leg. Jay finds her and takes her to hospital, where she tells her uncle who is the Chief of Police what happen and he tells her he thinks the serial killer had a partner. The doctor tells her that she won’t be able walk on her injured leg for a while and that it will take weeks to months to heal.
Jay followers her everywhere now and of course Jay tells her family about their relationship and he is still taking her to dance, to show her off even though she can’t run or walk and a killer is out to get her. Please. And her parents agree to that, I don’t care how much I trust my daughter’s boyfriend, she was almost killed and she can’t run if she tried, why in the world would I let her go to the school dance, Hell to the NO!!!
Not only that but at the dance Violet goes to the bathroom farthest away from the dance area and insists that her friends leave her there alone so that they can go back to the dance and wouldn’t have to wait while she re-wraps her foot. Then she doesn’t listen to herself either, the echo’s (murdered people imprints) were playing so loud in her ears and she was not listening, so while the guy stood beside her in the bathroom she didn’t notice until it was too late. Again if you know someone is after you, you shouldn’t insist on being left alone, that is just dumb.
In the end she was again saved by her boyfriend and slowed them down so much that he ends up getting shot, good thing the guy was off balance from where she hit him and her uncle Chief of Police came right around just in time to shoot the guy. Oh and did I mention that the second guy was the police officer that she ran into before she got his partner taken away by the police. I mean come on!!!!
Spoilers End
This book was a bit of a disappointment, I guess I held my expectations up a little too much… I don’t think I will be reading book two. Maybe if someone can give me a good review on it, I might pick it up but I will not buy it on my own. I mean don’t get me wrong I love the whole you can see where the murder victim is buried and who killed them but Violet was a little to whiny and self-centred to me and I think that her stupidity is what destroyed this book for me personally.
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