She had found a home that night. A safe place where she could put her gift to good use. With Sara's team of misfits." (Violet Ambrose)
The Last Echo focuses less on romance and more on the mystery, but it mostly focused on Rafe.
Rafe's name was mentioned on almost every single page. His physical appearance is always described. He is an enigma. nobody knows anything about him and he doesn't let anybody get close to him. Oh wait! Violet is the only girl who is able to get through to him and she's the only girl that he allows the get close to get close to him. She's the person that he acts different around. Every time Violet is around Rafe, she forgets she has a boyfriend. Oh, and when Violet and Rafe touch, a spark or some intense electric feeling passes through them. I wish I was joking! Rafe is a character that I feel was intended to create tension in Jay and Violet's relationship, but ends up being a character that takes over the whole entire book.
Violet also joins Sara's psychic team. I love books that have a ragtag group of teenagers with different personalities trying to solve mysteries and save the world. It's this element that I love in Unbreakable and Unmarked by Kami Garcia. However, in The Last Echo, the only character that I got to know about was Rafe. The other characters remain stereotypes and seem unimportant.
The one thing I didn't expect to work in this book was the mystery, but I ended up being surprised. The killer in this book is known as The Collector and I actually enjoyed the killer's POV in this one. It was dark, creepy and twisted. I actually found myself feeling sympathetic for the killer's past while feeling disgusted with myself for feeling sympathetic at the same time. The killer's POV, motives and profile was done extremely well in The Last Echo.
I'm not a fan of Violet, the main character in The Body Finder series, because I feel like she unnecessarily puts herself into dangerous situations, but in The Last Echo, I felt so much of dread for Violet. She is involved in so many dangerous occurrences and at the end of the book I became so worried about what would happen to her. I'm also quite interested at how The Last Echo ended. Violet gains an imprint because she killed The Collector in self-defense as well as Sara's team being run by a powerful force that doesn't want Violet to leave. I can't wait to see how Violet deals with events that ended The Last Echo in Dead Silence.
I enjoyed The Last Echo much more than I enjoyed The Body Finder and definitely much more than Desires of the Dead. The mystery aspect was freaky and creepy, the romance between Violet and Jay took a backseat and I even started caring a little about Violet.