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 read The Pledge in December and thought it was a great book. This one has been sitting on my shelf for awhile and I finally got around to it. Derting is becoming one of my favorite authors.

Violet is a likable character in every way. I liked how she "discovers" her best friend Jay all of a sudden and has all of these new feelings for him and has no idea what to do about them. I thought it was very genuine. I liked how she was close with her family (though I wish her parents were more involved in the plot line) including her Uncle Steven who is a major part of the book because he is the Police Chief.  I liked Violet because of her relationship with Jay (besides the fuzzy feelings). They are best friends.

There were several page turners in this book, where I scrambled to the next chapter because I was worried Violet was in trouble or the killer was near. Speaking of the killer, I liked how Derting wrote a few brief pages with the killer's perspective. I am leary of changing POV but it was brief, it was a complete different voice, but I got to see what a sicko the killer was.

I ordered the second one the day I finished.