Summary:

A serial killer on the loose. A girl with a morbid ability. And the boy who would never let anything happen to her.

Violet Ambrose can find the dead. Or at least, those who have been murdered. She can sense the echoes they leave behind… and the imprints they leave on their killers. As if that weren’t enough to deal with during junior year, she also has a sudden, inexplicable, and consuming crush on her best friend since childhood, Jay Heaton.

Now a serial killer has begun terrorizing Violet’s small town… and she realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.

Anna’s Thoughts:

The Body Finder is one of those books that when you really think about the story it scares you. The book itself doesn’t scare you, the characters don’t really scare you – but the idea behind the book scares you. How Kimberly came up with Violet’s ability, I don’t even want to know, it creeps me out. At the same time though, I want to know more. I want to know what happens to Violet after The Body Finder, I want there to be more to it. You are given an absolutely complete story from beginning to end, and somehow it wasn’t enough. Although Violet is just a teenage girl her gift (or nightmare?) could be so useful, so it makes me wonder if she’d keep hiding it, or would she put it to use. Which is why I suppose it’s a good thing there’s a sequel.

At the end of The Body Finder I was floored. While there were things that I wasn’t to happy with, the general idea behind the novel is something completely unique, something that I have never ever heard of before. That’s not an easy thing to do. I usually generally compare people and books like this to Stephen King. I’m not a big reader of his or a fan of his writing, but his ideas always and constantly blow my mind – and that’s how I feel about The Body Finder (minus the not liking the writing, because I did. A lot). I think that if Kimberly hadn’t written this book, and if her husband hadn’t given her the idea behind Violet’s gift it would have never been written. No one else would have ever thought of it. She portrays Violet and her fear of her ability so genuinely that it couldn’t have been anyone but her.

Having said all of that though, the one thing that bothered me about The Body Finder bothered me A LOT. I understand the term Paranormal Romance, it has all but infiltrated my bookshelves. I however, don’t like Romance Paranormal – which seems to be taking an uprising in YA literature. It’s where the Romance seemingly starts to devour the book. I loved The Body Finder and while it was nice to finally see a romance blossom that had already taken it’s roots before we were pulled into the world, there was a little too much of it for me. So much that it almost overtook the main plot of the book and instead of being a side plot firmly insisted it was just as important as the main plot and would. not. go. away. I understood half way through the book that these two people (Violet & Jay) were probably in the giant big picture, soul mates, so I really could have gone without the pages and pages of them being together and all over each other.

However, that is my only real complaint. The writing was wonderful, the plot was absolutely mind blowing and the characters were great and very dimensional. I loved the world and the feeling that Kimberly managed to transcribe in her writing, and I absolutely cannot wait for Desires of the Dead to be released. I just hope it focuses a little more on Violet and her ability then it does on her and Jay’s relationship.

You can now vote for your favourite cover makeover!! (You could you know, vote for mine if you wanted ;p)

So, Cindy at Princess Bookie is having another cover remake contest. I didn’t enter the last one.. well because I didn’t know about it, but I saw the covers that were to be remade this time and knew I had the perfect photo for Rules of Attraction by Simone Elekeles.

Along with The Snowball Effect by Holly Nicole Hoxter, & Princess for Hire by Lindsey Leavitt.

Summary:

What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all—looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12th should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it’s her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. In fact, she re-lives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she had ever imagined.

Anna’s Thoughts:

Overall, Before I Fall was, to say the least, a very interesting read. After looking around and seeing other reviews I can say I’m not quite as smitten with it as most people are. The reason I think is boiled down to movies. I’m a really big movie fan, and a lot of the movies I watch are somewhat like Before I Fall in that they always require you to guess constantly as to how it will end, those are just the type of movies I like. Books, however, are not an instant gratification, it’s not just an hour or two until you get to the end, it’s 480 pages (in the case of Before I Fall, anyway) of words that take much longer to get through. I think that’s where, for me, Before I Fall falters, it’s an brilliant concept, but when it runs the course of repetitiveness on a 480 page scale I found myself slowly dragging myself through it. However, I think much of the problem I had was because of the size of the book and the constant repetitiveness of it, because it certainly wasn’t with the writing or the general concept of the novel.

Lauren also gave an interview on the First Look part of the B&N forum where she said “I have two hopes for you as you begin to read Before I Fall. The first is simply this: I hope that in the beginning, you do not like the main character, Samantha, or her three best friends. I hope you find them mean, petty, self-absorbed, and superficial.” … “My second hope is more conventional. I hope that by the end of the book you will love Sam, and that you will have come to a deeper understanding of her friends, with all of their faults and frailties.” — I’m gonna have to say it, that even in the end I didn’t love Sam. Thought more of her? Maybe. Loved her? No. For me Samantha’s character as a whole was neverendingly whiney. Her friends were also nothing short of complete bitches. While they were slightly more compassionate to her, they still, especially Lindsay, treated her like crap for the most part. I think other than the size of the novel itself, my main issue is that the bullying was not… ‘properly’ addressed throughout the book. It’s mentioned and there are little things that happen that sort of mock Lindsay and her crew, but there is no overall sense of punishment, and I hate that. Especially for people who are so out rightly horrible. I wish that as a final stand Sam had stood up to them a little more strongly and kind of put them in their place other than her sideways remarks here and there.

Having said that though, in the end I did enjoy Before I Fall, and Lauren is a wonderful writer, and I honestly look forward to seeing what she comes up with next. She really managed to bring the story and Sam’s surroundings to life, and present the story in a very realistic way. The book itself is a little long, the main character is a little whiney, and the addressing of the major sub-plot (bullying) was a little weak, but hey, we can’t all be perfect!

To learn more about how to help stop bullying visit Stop Bulling Now.
Also to learn more about suicide prevention and how you can help visit Hopeline or Save.org.

Along with The Return: Shadow Souls (Vampire Diaries) by L.J. Smith