Book Review: The Body Finder (The Body Finder #1) by Kimberly Derting

Title: The Body Finder (The Body Finder #1)
Author: Kimberly Derting
Pages: 327
Publication: March 16, 2010
Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books
Summary taken from goodreads:

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.

2.5 STARS - I LIKED IT ENOUGH

MY REVIEW:

Again, I fell into the hype trap. I had much higher expectations for this book since I remembered reading nothing but praise about it when it first came out. I should know by now to not have such high expectations.

The book wasn't awful, but it could have been so much better. I guess I was expecting there to be more depth about Violet's ability and how it affected her ever since she was a kid and the psychological aspect of it. Instead, it's mainly glossed over multiple times and only one main event is ever really mention.

And I did not expect for the romance to take up so much of the book. Even though I hadn't bothered to read the summary again for the first time in a year or two before picking up the book, I did not think that the romance would be such a big focus of the book because of the murders occurring. Looking back at the summery now, it even says that "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," so excuse me for being turned off by the romance for the first half of the book.

Not to mention, during much of the first half of the book, the author did a lot of telling instead of showing, which made the info-dumps quite annoying. They were mainly about Violet and Jay's past, but still, it felt like the author was just unloading their backstories as quickly as she could to get to the main plot.

The book was a pretty quick read, probably because of the suspense, and for all of my complaints, it actually wasn't that bad, so if you have a copy of the book, you should give it a try. I own the sequel, so I'll get around to it eventually.