Review: The Body Finder

Title: The Body Finder

Author: Kimberly Derting

Published: 2010

Pages: 327

My Rating: 3/5

The Body Finder is one book that I've been wanting to read for a while. I'm glad that I've finally got it out of the way, but I'm not really sure what I actually think of the book. 

The concept intrigued me. A girl who has a special gift of finding dead - more specifically - murdered bodies. This seemed original when I first heard it, but then I read Numbers and My Soul to Take (where the lead girls can see someone's deathdate and sense when someone's going to die respectively) and it didn't seem so new. I think that is one of the reasons I couldn't get too invested into the character's lives and story. 

Every few chapters, there would be a chapter from the point of view of the serial killer. Who kidnaps and kills girls from inside and outside the local area where Violet (the main character) lives. These I found to be the most interesting and quite frankly disturbing chapters. As you get inside the head of this monster and follow him as he goes on the 'hunt', as he refers to it. 

The actual murder mystery was quite interesting. But not really unusual enough to make it stand out from other murder mysteries I've read about or watched on television. I also found that the suspense felt quite stilted as many of the chapters focused on the second plotline of Violet's and Jay's (her lifelong friend and now love interest) relationship.

If you are into YA romance, then you'd definitely like this book. But unfortunately, I've become tired of the typical romantic characters from YA books like this one. They were the usual; 'girl and boy have been friends since childhood and are now starting to feel things for each other'. Their relationship was painfully obvious and inevitable, that I felt like yelling at them to stop with the drama and just get together. This is what sadly took away from the suspense for me. I also found both of their characters extremely boring and uninteresting. There was nothing that I disliked about them, it was just that there was nothing to make them stand out from other characters similar to them that I've read about. 

But saying this, I did think that the plot was well thought out, with a few excellent little twists, and the writing was very well done, and clear to read. Unfortunately, I just found the bland characters and lack of originality to be a bit of a let down. 

I'm not very invested in this YA paranormal romance that is going around at the moment, as you can probably tell. But if you are interested it in, then I'd really recommend this book for you! Particularly , if you liked My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent or Cryer's Cross by Lisa McMann.