Desires of the Dead ~ Kimberly Derting ARC review

synopsis, review and (obviously) book have mega spoilers for the first book, The Body Finder, so just read that one if you haven't yet!! (my review is here)

Desires of the Dead (Body Finder #2)
Harper
February 15, 2011
368 pages
buy/info @ Amazon


Violet and her town are finally safe from the serial killer abducting and killing teenage girls--who even tried to kill Violet. But she's not safe from her 'gift,' her ability to sense and locate dead beings and match their killers to them.

On a day with one of her friends, a day just trying to be a normal teenage girl--as Jay is still the only one of her friends who knows what she can do--she comes across another echo, another body calling to her.

It's her discovery of this body that brings Violet under the notice of the FBI and threatens to make what she does not so secret anymore.

Violet has no idea who to go to with this new development--she would have gone to Jay, but now that they're dating things seem different and anyway, he's always spending time with his new best friend Mike.

With everything seemingly coming apart around her, Violet starts looking into Mike's more than tragic family past--and wondering how and when everything went so wrong. And how to fix it.


Desires of the Dead is interesting because it both expands the story from what The Body Finder focused on (moving out from just Jay, the girls and Violet, her family and the murders to more characters and more locales) but also becoming more focused. Desires of the Dead, logically looks more at Violet and her ability and what that would logically mean for someone in more of the long run. What it would mean if you found bodies, if someone found out, how someone would try to leverage that or you.

Because neither of those things loses anything or is weak so that the other can be strong, I think that Desires of the Dead might even be a stronger book than The Body Finder. The characters are still great. The new characters add a lot to the story; and there's depth to them that adds to the plot as well.

Violet and Jay aren't left in flux nor are they just coasting along so that everything else can be developed. Things aren't given conflict for conflicts sake, either.

The fact that Violet and her 'ability' were taken to another level really made this story realistic even when in one sense it's not.


10/10 for this . . . and when oh when can I find out about more either from Kimberly Derting and/or in this series!!!

won this from PitchDark books on Twitter!


(also I know there's something in my summary that's off from the first book but I didn't want people just glancing at it to see it and spoil themselves for the first book . . . even if I did have a warning!)