The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting
Series: The Body Finder #1
Source: Kindle copy
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: March 16, 2010
Age Genre: YA

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 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 dead birds her cat left for her. But now that a serial killer is terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he's claimed haunt her daily, Violet realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.
Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved by her hope 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.

Okay, I'm a little angry too...

This book just might be the biggest disappointment of my year. Seriously, I expected this really interesting mystery with a paranormal twist, a race against time to find a killer, with a side-dish of awesome friends-to-lovers romance.

What I got?

The exact opposite; a bland romance with the whole awesome body finding bit being just an after thought, just something the author throws in to make things a little bit more exciting and unique.

BUT IF THE WHOLE THING IS MENTIONED ONCE IN FOUR CHAPTERS BETWEEN moans and groans about Jay and their relationship and his turning hot, and how she's worried about ruining them, and gasp other girls are noticing him too, the vain, stupid imbeciles! look at them fawning over him--oh, hello Jay *fawns* then IT'S NOT REALLY GOING TO WORK.

Seriously! You can see how unimportant Derting found the whole murdering girls thing by how the murderer has no identity whatsoever. She didn't ever design to give him a name. Seriously, at all times, even after being caught, the characters in the books refer to him as the killer/the murderer/insert other title.

And he has no background, no added information to his character aside for the whole "I like killing girls" bit. Where are the motives, how he came to do it, the little things that make his brain tick, all the things real, exciting murder mysteries have?

And the romance itself? There was nothing to it! I love the friends-to-lovers theme, it's my favorite, but here, I didn't feel it was well done at all. First of all, it seems like Violet only woke up to Jay's romantic appeal when... well, when he became hot.

And then... well, it's just... there wasn't very much of them here. Big parts of this book showed them fighting, tying to make each other jealous, or Jay kind of being the really overbearing boyfriend (without him actually being a boyfriend...)

Which is the main problem, really. Before all the drama started, they were already acting like a couple. Why couldn't it be just a natural progression, without all the BS and drama? Because they were really cute and sweet without all that..

And then, there is the matter of Violet's powers. We don't explore them, at all. There is no real background to them, nor even a curiousness about them from our characters. Violet has powers, and that's it. And everyone freakin' accepts this. No one but the killer even wonders what the f the police captain doing bringing a 16 year old to a crime scene!

There were a lot of interesting concepts in this book, but the execution, or lack of thereof, made this book so very meh. 

Sadly, the only way I'll be reading the next books, is if they're at bargain price, like this one was...

Nitzan★