The Body Finder (Body Finder Series) by Kimberly Derting

The Body Finder, first book in Kimberly Derting's Body Finder Series, is even more amazing than advertised!  This book is beautiful, gripping, scary and haunting.  I loved every minute of it!  Violet Ambrose has inherited something from her grandma that most kids don't: the ability to sense the death echoes of the unsettled dead.  The echoes of "murdered" people and animals call to her.  They want to be found and properly laid to rest.  They also demand justice and Violet can give them that too.  She can not only sense the echoes of the dead but the imprint that the murder left on the killer, linking him to the victim.

Violet was only eight years old when she found her first human murder victim.  Her first and only until her Junior year in high school when she finds another.  Then girls from the surrounding community begin to go missing.  Violet may be the only one who can find them and bring their killer to justice, if she doesn't get too distracted by her new feelings for her lifelong best friend, Jay Heaton.  Will she find the predator and stop him or will SHE becomes his prey?

Violet is a great character.  For a teenage girl, she is really well adjusted.  For a sixteen year old who sees, hears and smells the echoes of the restless dead, she's amazingly normal and not whiny.  I love how pure and real her voice is.  And who wouldn't appreciate Jay, your average boy next door/ BFF who is suddenly your totally hot boy next door and BFF??  Yeah, Jay is pretty awesome!  He's so sweet and loyal, even under all his swagger and his pretense of not noticing all the girls who flock to him.  This book is definitely for readers 16 and up due to talk of violence, death, swearing and sexual assault.  But it is a must read.

You can find out more about Kimberly Derting and her books on her website or follow her on Twitter!!

The Body Finder earns 4 Fairies for being a different kind of ghost story.