***The Starry-Eyed Revue***: meh

Title: The Body Finder
Author: Kimberly Derting
Series: The Body Finder #1
Publisher: Harper
Publication Date: March 16th, 2010
Source: purchased
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her "power" to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes that the dead leave behind in the world... and the imprints that attach to their killers.

Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find the dead birds her cat had tired of playing with. But now that a serial killer has begun terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he's claimed haunt her daily, she realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.

Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet on her quest to find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved to find herself hoping that Jay's intentions are much more than friendly. But even as Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer.. she might become his next prey.

I cannot tell you how long this book has been on my "to read" list. I snatched it up a while ago on an amazon daily deal, and vowed that I would read it soon. I actually followed through!!! lol. There is a small cluster of books I wanted to read this fall, and The Body Finder was one of them. I'm sad to say that I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.

Violet is Sixteen. I often felt like I was reading the POV of a 13 or 14 year old. It's weird, because I wouldn't say she was immature per say, but her mentality at times comes across that way... I mostly saw it in her relationship with Jay. She was very naive and clueless when it came to boys and such. It was sweet, don't get me wrong. It was cute watching their feelings change for each other but it would have been more believable if they were younger.

What I really liked was Violets ability to seek out dead people. I felt like her methods were pretty unique and I was all into that. There are some pretty intense creepy moments in this story. I'd be all on the edge of my seat... and then the next chapter we would be back to the sappy tween love drama. I was literally yelling at my kindle... "Hello!!! Can we get back to the killer now!!!!"

So yeah, definitely not my favorite fall read thus far. I will continue with the series I think, but I'm not in any rush to pick the next one up.

About the author:

Kimberly is the author of the BODY FINDER series (HarperCollins), THE PLEDGE
trilogy (Simon & Schuster), and THE TAKING trilogy (HarperTeen). She lives in the Pacific Northwest, the ideal place to write anything dark or creepy...a gloomy day can set the perfect mood. She lives with her husband and their three beautiful (and often mouthy) children who provide an endless source of inspiration.

Find Kimberly:

Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

Labels: dead people, harper, kimberly derting, meh, reviews, the body finder

Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: Speak
Publication Date: October 16th, 2008
Source: Purchased for Kindle
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

John Green is a Legend of sorts. If you are a reader at all, you have surely heard his name. Also there is that whole nerd fighter thing he has going on, whatever that is. But it's popular. Anyway, I read The Fault in Our Stars a while back and I liked it. I didn't love it, it was too wordy for me. I preferred the movie.

I feel like I will probably prefer the movie for Paper Towns as well. There is something wonderful about Greens writing, but at the same time, I don't click with it. There are moments when I read a line and I think, wow that was brilliant. But most often I'm bored and want the story to move along.

I should have known I wasn't going to love Paper Towns. I tried to read a book last year, that was compared to Paper Towns. I thought, sure it's compared to a John Green book, it has to be a winner. Nope, I couldn't get into it. I tried but it wasn't for me. I can't even think of what the name was, that's how much of an impact it's made on my life.

The thing that I disliked the most about Paper Towns was Margo. I thought she was an asshole. And Quentin thinks she shits candy. She does not. Though I'll give her props for some of the pranks she pulls off in the beginning. I was diggin the book early on... but then it just drops off and I was bored.

Finally things start happening again. But in the end, I felt like... really I pushed through all that for this. It was rather uneventful I'd say. I just expected more. And that could be because of the hype, or just because Greens writing isn't my thing. I'm not sure.

When I watched the movie trailer, I thought it looked like something I would really enjoy. I'm still going to give that a try, because sometimes the movie is better.

I would recommend this book for sure. I know a ton of people who have read and loved it. I just wish I would have liked it more. :/

About the authors:

John Green's first novel Looking for Alaska won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award presented by the American Library Association. His second novel An Abundance of Katherines was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next novel Paper Towns is a New York Times bestseller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best YA Mystery. In January 2012, his most recent novel The Fault in Our Stars was met with wide critical acclaim, unprecedented in Green's career. The praise included rave reviews in Time Magazine and The New York Times, on NPR, and from award-winning author Markus Zusak. The book also topped the New York Times Children's Paperback Bestseller list for several weeks. Green has also coauthored a book with David Levithan called Will Grayson, Will Grayson, published in 2010. The film rights for all his books, with the exception of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, have been optioned to major Hollywood Studios.

In 2007, John and his brother Hank were the hosts of a popular internet blog, "Brotherhood 2.0," where they discussed their lives, books and current events every day for a year except for weekends and holidays. They still keep a video blog, now called "The Vlog Brothers," which can be found on the Nerdfighters website.

Find John:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads