Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

21 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by Kayla in 4 stars, fiction, horror, romance, series, young adult Tags: anna, anna dressed in blood, book, cas, fiction, first, ghost, hunter, kendare blake, kill, murder, mystery, review, series, thesius, ya, young adult

 

Anna Dressed in Blood

Author:
Kendare Blake

Pages: [hardcover] 316

memorable quote:
“It feels so separate, like I’ve touched something that’s taken the color out of me. Or maybe I’m in color now and they’re in black and white.”

favorite characters: Thomas & Cas

summary:

Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story. . .

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until his gruesome murder by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn’t expect anything outside of the ordinary: move, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, but now stained red and dripping blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

And she, for whatever reason, spares his life.

review:

 I started this thinking I was in for a good, creepy ghost story, and knew that somehow romance would be thrown into the mix. Even though I knew it wouldn’t be a conventional paranormal story, it fell slightly short of my expectations, though I still enjoyed it.

For those looking for a psychological horror, this isn’t for you. It’s full of horrific ghosts, murders, mayhem, battles with spirits-and great descriptions of all of those. The writing in that respect was brilliant, and I could easily imagine a movie being made of this. The dialogue fell a little flat, as did the characters. Some of the things they did didn’t seem to make any sense, with their pasts, and some didn’t have reactions at all when something extremely life changing happened to them, just because they weren’t the main guy. Even he had his down moments.

I liked the new-ish take on the bad guys. While it’s hard to be original about ghosts, these weren’t the typical bump in the dark kind. Each one had their separate story, their own tricks up their sleeves, and a knack for killing people who happened to wander their way. This book isn’t for those who get squeamish at death scene descriptions.

 I did not, however, know that this is going to be a series. While I’m going to read the next book, whenever it comes out, I really need to start paying attention to that, so I’ll know what to expect. I thought everything would be resolved by the end of Anna Dressed in Blood, and while most was, there was still enough to keep me hooked. Which was the point. And . . I think it could have worked well enough as a stand alone.

GHOULISHLY GRUESOME. 4/5 stars

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