Book Review- The Last Echo

I just finished reading The Last Echo by Kimberly Derting for an Around the World ARC Tour.

From Goodreads:

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....

While I enjoyed reading this book, I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the first two.  That's not to say that I didn't like it, because I did, but it wasn't like the other two where I didn't want to put them down.

At first, I remembered how much I liked Violet and Jay's relatationship.  But then it got a little too..maybe intense is the word.  I don't really know.  But like I was feeling uncomfortable.  And I didn't like Rafe or Violet's budding feeling for him.  Stay away from him and stay with Jay, Violet! 

The case this time was really creepy.  It had me completely freaked out.  So sick.  But that's what made it good!  There was definitely lots of action and we got to know more about the secret group that she's in.  I'm glad that things were explained more.

The very very end was a complete surprise to me.  I didn't see that coming (although I never liked this person).  For some reason the title of the story had me thinking that this would be the last book in the series, but after reading the last couple of pages, there just HAS to be at least another book.  There's no way the series could end on that!  (And after just checking out Kimberly Derting's website, I see that the fourth book in the series is due out in 2012.  Whew!)

I gave this book a rating of 3.5/5.

The Last Echo will be released on April 17, 2012.

This book fulfills items in the following challenges:
2012 Reading Challenge 150+: 26
2012 ARC Reading Challenge: 23
2012 Young Adult Reading Challenge: 23

*FTC Disclosure: I was given this book for free for an honest review as part of the Around the World Tours.