Thursday, December 8, 2011

Book Review: The Body Finder, by Kimberly Derting

The Body Finder is a thrilling mystery with a somewhat annoying romance along side.

Violet has been able to sense death since she was a young child. Most of the time she finds dead animals, and is so troubled that she has to bury them properly before she can feel at peace. Violet finds her first human body when she is eight years old. This murder was never solved, and of course, caused Violet much turmoil.

Another aspect of her gift, is that she can sense death on other people -- those who have perhaps killed someone while at war, or as a police officer. She can also sense death on those who murder. And the sense she gets from the body is the same as the sense from the killer. She may hear something, smell something, or even see something around these people. So, Violet is, of course, going to get involved in finding a serial killer of local teen girls.

The mysterious plot of who the killer is, and how Violet uses her gift to help and to put herself in danger is non-stop exciting. Violet rang true as a teen with a gift who is trying very hard to be normal. The supporting characters are also realistic teens.

Now for the romance. I love Jay. He's too good to be true, and that's OK. Jay and Vi have been inseparable best friends since childhood. But things have gotten weird since they are teens, and Violet's feeling are becoming romantic instead of friendly. This part went on just a bit too long for me. I think it is obvious where the romantic story is going, and both Violet and Jay were just too clueless to be believed. I also think the part about every popular girl literally stalking the hotie Jay was really overdone. I'm around teen girls every day. They don't act like that. They give up way before the girls in this book did. There may be one of them that is somewhat "stalker-like" but not the droves of girls in this book.

This is really a small complaint, and once the romance really got going -- well, Derting knows how to write a romantic scene. And then another romantic scene, and so on. The romance was sweet and melty, and never went too far.

The tension builds nicely toward the resolution, and even though I thought I knew who the bad guy was (and I was right), it didn't matter. The pacing was smooth and kept me reading late into the night.

Many teens will love this book because it combines the mystery and romance so well. It's a page turner, and  I won't have problems getting this one to move off the shelves. There's only kissing and some heavy petting, but there's also alcohol usage. So, you may want to save this one for the older teens.

Published by Harper, 2010
Copy obtained from the library
 327 pages

Rating: 4/5





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2 comments:

  1. This is one of my favorite books. I love Kim's voice and Jay well he's my favorite YA guy. Great review.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not huge on YA but this one keeps saying 'give me a chance' sounds so good.

    ReplyDelete

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