Monday, June 24, 2013

Review: Anna Dressed in Blood

Title:  Anna Dressed in Blood
Series:  Anna #1
Author:  Kendare Blake
Publisher:  Tor Teen
Pages:  387
Format:  eBook
Source:  Bought
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.
My Review:  Why, oh why, did I wait so long to read this book?  It was so good.  I can't believe I kept myself from it's awesomeness for so long.  It was not at all what I had been expecting and I loved it so much.  I generally try to stay away from ghost stories because the ones I've read are normally just tragic love stories where the biggest problem is that the main character can't touch their dead love interest.   This was not like that!  There was other things going on besides the romance that develops.  

First of all, I absolutely adore Cas.  He is one of my all time favorite book guys now.  His snark and confidence hooked me from the very beginning and I totally fell for him.  He was such a badass but he also had a softer, more vulnerable side that tugged on my heart strings.  I also really liked the side characters like Carmel and Thomas.  At first I wasn't sure how I would like either of them but they grew on me after a few chapters!  I liked the contrast between all of the characters together.  They complimented each other well.  Anna was awesome, too!  She never really scared me like I think she was intended to at first but I liked her persona and the descriptions we were presented.  It painted an alive and well developed picture in my head.  

The plot moved relatively quickly, however, there were a few times that I just wanted to skip over to get to some more action.  It kept my attention for the most part though!  

The scare factor was okay for me.  I know it was supposed to be really scary and it probably is for a lot of people.  But most of the scaring was supposed to come from the descriptions I think and that didn't really freak me out.  What did up the creep factor for me was the things we didn't necessarily "see".  The little clues that were dropped and the subtle creepiness totally had my heart pounding. 

I love the character in this story and the plot had me anxious to find out what would happen next.  While it wasn't as terrifying as I originally thought it would be, there were sometimes while reading that I was checking under my bed for monsters and glancing around my room for ghosts.  If you're hesitating on picking up this book, don't!  It was completely worth the read! 

Four Cards


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