The Body Finder Series Book #4: Dead Silence by Kimberly Derting

A common theme in all four books of this series is the secrets that Violet keeps. But it isn’t really until this book that she realizes that she is keeping too many of them, and that her best friend in the whole world – Chelsea – is starting to get annoyed with them. Violet realizes it and doesn’t know what to do about it on top of everything else.

It’s been a few months since Violet’s kidnapping and she’s trying to deal with living with her own imprint. Her friends are worried about her, but she doesn’t know how to be around them with this imprint. She’s taking more of the sleeping pills to dull the echo. But it isn’t until her mother cleans out the attic and finds a box of her grandmother’s old stuff that Violet finds a way to deal with the imprint and that there is something going on with her team. It turns out that the only time the echo/imprint goes away is when the heart of the victim is taken out of the body. Rafe – because he still likes Violet – digs up Caine and removes his heart so Violet can be at peace. And then there’s the picture of the team her grandmother was on – The Circle of Seven – that includes Dr. Lee, Rafe’s mom, and Krystal’s mom too.

In the other three books, I really liked the interlude chapters that dealt with the killer POVs for that book. In this book, I really didn’t like it. The killer this time around has major, major issues with family and drugs. It kind of made me sick. And the prologue! That was just such a mean twist.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. This book was still really good, but I still didn’t like the killer this time around. Also there were a lot of unanswered questions for a final book of a series. What exactly happened to the Circle of Seven? Who is in control of Violet’s current team? And even though Violet ‘chose’ Jay, what about Rafe?

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The Body Finder Series Book #3: The Last Echo by Kimberly Derting

A question for all the authors out there: when you’re writing a book with a female narrator or main character, and you introduce several guy characters into her story, do you automatically think, hm, there should be a love triangle? Or does that plot point come up as you go along? I feel like I need to ask this question, because in about every other supernatural/paranormal book I read, there always seems to be a love triangle between the main character and the guys she knows. The Last Echo was no exception to that rule, which I was really disappointed. Not only did this series go from having the best guy friend being the main character’s boyfriend, but now we have a love triangle too.

Violet is readjusting to her life again. This time she has to get used to being on a team of people who know that she’s different. A whole bunch of new characters get introduced – Gemma, Krystal, Sam, etc. – while Sara and Rafe are kept around. The team that Violet is on is investigating a new case. College girls are turning up dead. A new serial killer – called the collector – is on the loose. And unfortunately for Violet, he seems to have taken a new interest in her, even though she isn’t the type of girl he goes for. What happens changes the course of Violet’s life forever.

So I’ll admit this book was just as good as the other two. The new team for Violet are really interesting people. The whole love triangle thing aside, I kind of liked the character of Rafe too. He’s dark and mysterious, and when his real story actually comes out you kind of feel sorry for the guy. And the final fifty pages when Violet finally has to stand up to the killer alone…just wow.

I will admit I’m still kind of curious about whom the team actually works for if not the FBI, and why they are so adamant on keeping Violet on board. Plus, the whole thing with the sleeping pills? I think that’s going to have some major impact in the next book.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. I still really love the interlude chapters that come from the killer’s POV. They make for some interesting reads. I just wish Jay and Violet’s other friends had made more of an appearance in this one.

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The Body Finder Series Book #2: Desires of the Dead by Kimberly Derting

So, I’ll admit (I really should rename this blog to confessions of a bookaholic) second books in a series where I loved the first book scare me. Why? Because I always feel like there are high expectations for that book and they can never live up to their predecessor. Desires of the Dead was no exception. I’ll admit something else: my fear was rational.

Don’t get me wrong, Desires of the Dead was amazing. This time around there isn’t a serial killer for Violet to find. Instead a mysterious person is terrorizing her from her school and the FBI. You see she found a missing boy’s body while she was in the city with her friend Chelsea and she called in an anonymous tip that turned out to be not so anonymous. But this member of the FBI, Sara Priest, is different. She has a team of special people who have abilities like Violet…or so you think. Nothing is really said about this other members of Priest’s team, and the only member you really meet is Rafe, but his ‘power’ isn’t revealed at all. Although I do have my suspicions. Add that to the new kids Mike and his sister Megan monopolizing Jay’s time and Violet is one stressed out teenager.

A few chapters, the one’s that involved Violet finally telling Jay the truth about what’s been going on with her, reminded me that this isn’t a true psychotic thriller – like the ones you find on the upper level of your library – but a YA book filled with a lot of angst. I mean, seriously. I got where Violet was coming from when Jay didn’t believe her that it was Megan, but c’mon, girl. You find dead people and animals, shouldn’t you have a little bit more maturity?

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. The twists in this book were amazing, and the ending was very climatic. Curious to see more of Rafe and Sara in the next book, and hope that the whole ‘killer’ POVs continue. It makes for more intrigue.

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The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

To mix things up a little from my usual vampires, paranormal, romance, etc. I decided to read a psychotic thriller. And after reading this book the only thing I have to ask is other than the main setting of a high school and the characters being high school students, how exactly is this book considered YA?

But before we get into that in depth, The Body Finder is about this junior in high school named Violet Ambrose, since she was a little girl she has this unique ability to sense ‘echoes.’ These echoes surround every dead thing – whether it is animal or human – and depending on the situation also surround the killer. Except for one instance when she was eight, Violet mostly finds bodies of animals and buries them in her backyard so that they can be at peace. However, a string of young girls disappearing causes her to use her power to find the bodies of these girls, especially after she finds one accidentally in the lake on the night of a party.

While she’s dealing with this killer, she also has to deal with the normal high school life and the complicated relationship that is her best friend Jay who has turned ridiculously hot over the summer and who she seems to be feeling an attraction to. But because of a dumb fourth grade kiss that went terribly, they have sworn never to try dating each other again. So what’s a girl to do?

Now that I’m typing about Violet’s relationship with Jay, I can sort of see how this book can be considered YA, but it’s the other stuff – the murders of the girls, the brief interlude chapters in the killer’s POV – that kind of make me wary about giving this a YA generalization. Definitely not for younger readers of the genre.

So this book really had me going, there were a lot of times – because I’m the type of girl who reads more than one book at a time – where I just wanted to not read the other book that I was reading and just continue with this one. It had me on the edge of my seat, between Jay and Violet realizing their feelings for each other, and the killer’s POV chapters making me gasp in horror, I was just…enthralled with this novel. I can’t wait to read more!

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Refreshing. Great plot and characters, especially the development of said plot and characters. And for once the parents in a YA novel didn’t piss me off! These were amazing parents!

Bookshelf worthy? Okay, now I’m running out of floor space.