Violet thought she'd made peace wit her unique ability to sense the echoes of the dead and the imprints that cling to their killers...that is, until she acquired an imprint of her own. Now she's more determined than ever to lead a normal life. However, the people who run the special investigative team Violet works for have no intention of letting her go.
When someone close to her becomes a suspect in a horrific murder, Violet finds herself pulled into a hunt for a vicious madman with an arm of devoted followers--and quickly discovers that protecting those closest to her is far more difficult than protecting herself.
I received this ARC from the publishers for an honest review for the Dead Silence Blog Tour. I was in no way compensated for this review.
Kimberly Derting's Body Finder series is definitely one of my favorites. Violet's abilities to find dead bodies is a loose form of paranormal, hence it's part of the drawl. The other part comes from the mystery! I love a good mystery with paranormal elements and this series has all that! Dead Silence is the latest in the series and continues Violet's story.
Last time around, we had that uber creepy stalker guy, that Violet ended up killing in self-defense. She now carries an echo because of that. She knows that not everyone who has an echo is a bad guy or necessarily a murderer. Police officers and men and women of war carry echoes if they had to kill someone in the line of duty and all that. But still, the echo haunts her and keeps her up at night.
Life is slowly getting back to normal for Violet. School is about to start up, a new year. Violet is eager for life to become normal, but it's hard since she can hear her own echo and it's driving her crazy. But she is living a double life of sorts. She still works with the team at the Center, doing her part in helping people, but there are more than a few times she has to bail out on her friends, which causes its own problems.
But then a case falls into Violet's lap. Unintentionally. She is led to find the bodies of a murdered family and one of them is missing an echo. She can't figure out why and it drives her bonkers. It's the murdered family that is the kickoff to the rest of the story, for there was a daughter as well, but she wasn't with them. She has gone missing. And it turns out Grady, a guy from Violet's school who she had a kissing mishap with way back in book 1, was her boyfriend at a time. And who is basically suspect number 1. Violet quickly clears Grady's name, he carries no echoes and she has to convince her uncle of this so he can look for the real killer.
The killer was pretty creepy, maybe not as creepy as our past bad guys and nowhere near as creepy as the guy from last time. This one was more misunderstood, came from a neglectful family and he's looking to have his own family. Which is where the other kids come from. He has a few teens with him and he's their "father". He wants to have a family that's full of love and not anger and violence like his was. Although in this one, I felt like we didn't get to read too many chapters of his point of view. There was a decent amount, just not as much as I thought we had last time. I'm weird I guess, because I wanted to read a little more from his point of view to see what makes him tick.
This book got pretty intense in a few places! Like Violet trying to solve the riddle of the boy with no echo--and she does solve it! There's also a lot of tension between Violet and Jay, where it becomes fearful if their relationship will survive. Rafe and Gemma start attending Violet's school, Chelsea becomes infatuated with Rafe. And of course there's lots of danger and intrigue as the previous books had! Plus more of the sweet romance between Violet and Jay!
Another huge part of the book involved Violet learning a whopper of a secret about her grandmother. It connects to her in everything and not just because she and her grandmother shared the same ability. I was fascinated by this turn of events, it will be most interesting to see what Kimberly will do with this in future books.
The ending was shocking! Like the jaw dropping kind! There is a prologue that gives you an idea of what will happen, which at first felt spoilery too me, but it just made me want to read this as fast as possible to see what actually happens at the end and I was still blown away! By the ending, everything has changed for Violet and likely nothing will be the same anymore.
The Body Finder series is a truly remarkable one! Never have I read a YA series that has such an amazing mystery built into it! There's twists and turns that you can't ever see coming. It's the perfect read for someone wanting to take a break from the paranormal reads, although again, I consider Violet's ability to be loosely paranormal, as that of the other teens. Even if you love paranormal reads, I still recommend it because being psychic in a way, is paranormal like! This series has everything a good mystery needs and more!
Overall rating 4.5/5 stars
