Book Review: The Last Echo by Kimberly Derting.

Product details:
Publisher: Headline.
Release date: March 29th 2012.
Paperback, 368 pages.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Ages: 14+
Series: The Body Finder #3
Other Books in Series: The Body Finder, Desires of the Dead.
Source: Received from publisher for review.

In the end, all that’s left is an echo.

Violet kept her morbid ability to sense dead bodies a secret from everyone except her family and her childhood-best-friend-turned-boyfriend, Jay Heaton. That is until forensic psychologist Sara Priest discovered Violet’s talent and invited her to use her gift to track down murderers. Now, as she works with an eclectic group of individuals—including mysterious and dangerously attractive Rafe—it’s Violet’s job to help those who have been murdered by bringing their killers to justice.

When Violet discovers the body of a college girl killed by “the girlfriend collector” she is determined to solve the case. But now the serial killer is on the lookout for a new “relationship” and Violet may have caught his eye....

Please note: There may be spoilers for previous books in the series in this review.

The Last Echo, the latest pulse-pounding installment in Kimberly Derting’s Body Finder series sees the stakes raised higher than ever for Violet Ambrose when she joins a special investigative team in order to put her morbid ability to greater use than ever before.  The missing dead have always called to Violet, but now the ability that has served her so well in setting countless tortured souls free might lead her straight into the arms of a truly twisted killer….

The Last Echo is a thrill ride of a book.  A true page turner, it ups the intensity of The Body Finder, and is darker and more sinister than Desires of the Dead.  While the storylines in those books were creepy, they have nothing on this truly twisted tale which sees a killer, dubbed “the collector” due to his penchant for collecting, and then killing his girlfriends, on the loose, and worse still, he’s set his sights on Vi.  This is definitely a shivers down your spine kind of tale and in terms of stellar plotting and page-turning intensity, it is the strongest of the three books.

But it’s not my favourite.

In The Body Finder, I fell head over heels in love with Jay Heaton, and the relationship he and Vi shared.  They have the kind of best friends turned boyfriend/girlfriend relationship that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and their pairing is truly one of my favourite in YA.  I didn’t mind that their growing romance dominated the plot in The Body Finder, in fact, I loved it, but here, I felt that Jay was pushed into the background in favour of Rafe, and anyone who’s on Team Jay is not going to be happy about it (and who’s not on Team Jay, right?!)

Violet’s life has changed a lot in this book.  She’s trying to do good things, great things with her ability, and naturally it takes up a whole lot of her time. Time, incidentally, that’s spent with Rafe, not Jay.   Okay, so there are a couple of cute Jay moments in The Last Echo, but I wanted more.  I’ve been waiting a whole year for my Jay Heaton fix, but instead I got too much Rafe and not enough Jay.  I was prepared. I knew Rafe and his secrets were going to take center stage in this one, but hopefully by the next installment Violet will have sorted out her work-life balance, and she’ll be back to spending lots of time “doing homework” with Jay!

Despite my not-enough-Jay gripes, The Last Echo is a great read, and one that kept me turning the pages right to the end.  And, oh, the ending of this book left me screaming for more! What an ending, that’s all I’ll say – it truly shocked me, and I loved it!  I’m already counting down the days until my next Body Finder fix, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed for more Jay in this one!