The Body Finder

by Kimberly Derting

Dedication: "To Amanda, Connor, and Abigail, for letting me love you"

First paragraph: "Violet Ambrose wandered away from the safety of her father as she listened to the harmony of sounds weaving delicately around her. The rustling of the leaves mingled gently with the restless calls of birds and the far-off rushing waters of the icy river that lay beyond the trees."

Review: Violet is a gifted girl who seems to have inherited some of her grandmother's special talents for seeking out the dead. When I say, "dead" I'm not talking about ghosts. She has a sense for when things or people's lives have ended unexpectedly, brutally. This is something Violet is having a hard time coming to terms with. It's almost too much to handle and that's before factoring in her normal, complicated teenage life. One such normal life issue is the butterflies that appear in her stomach each time her long time best friend, Jay Heaton, comes around.

Have you ever seen the show Medium? This book is like that show but a lot different. I guess the similarities lie in the dealing with dead people and tracking down bad guys. Unfortunately for Violet, her gift is specifically with finding the dead. If someone is still alive it's a hopeless cause. This could have given the book a more morbid feel but I think that there was enough of Violet's teenage angsting going on to keep it lighter.

I enjoy this sort of thing. Catching bad guys. Correcting the wrongs for lives that ended too soon. There were definitely some unexpected twists. And the romance angle was sweet, enticing. I did, however, have a hard time connecting with Violet's friends, other than Jay, but they were background characters so I don't think you were meant to know a whole lot about them.

I think the worst part, and maybe the best, was knowing what was coming and having no idea how to tell Violet what she was about to walk into. If I hadn't been worried about people judging my mental sanity, I would have been yelling at the pages trying to warn her, regardless of whether or not she could actually hear a word I was saying.

My only other complaint was in regard to the romance aspect. But it wasn't a huge complaint and I can't say anything without posting spoilers so. I guess you should let me know what you thought about it all once you read it!

So, read this book. My "Warnding" is that it is on the darker side but Derting was able to keep it from being too sinkingly morbid with silly light teenage humor, something I really appreciated.

The Body Finder was a nice mix of excitement, intensity, suspense, and romance. Something you should definitely consider reading if paranormal or sci-fi are a genre of choice.

For more information about The Body Finder, click here!

Post note: Reading this book will make you either an overprotective parent that never lets their girls go anywhere without a body guard or a super paranoid woman. Read the book if you want to know what I'm talking about.